Nancy was Born in 1931 in Pasadena, California, to Herbert and Edwina Hicks of San Marino. After attending South Pasadena High School, Nancy received her B.A. in Education and Art from Occidental College in 1953. While teaching kindergarten in the Monterey Peninsula Unified School district, Nancy met Judson A. Grenier of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Eight months later, they were married in Koenigslutter, Germany where her husband served in Army Intelligence during the Korean War. In 1956, the couple settled in Manhattan Beach, California where they raised four children and lived the rest of their 65-year marriage together.

Nancy became a well-known artist and instructor through her continued studies in watercolors and printmaking, first at El Camino College and then the Chouinard Art Institute, CSU Long Beach and UCLA. She attended workshops with Rex Brandt, Jade Fon and Milford Zornes, practitioners of the "California Style" of watercolor painting. Skilled in many media, Nancy designed a pool for architect Richard Neutra's Perkins house, in 1953 - for her art history professor Constance Perkins. Nancy also derived great satisfaction supporting and encouraging aspiring artists while teaching art and printmaking at the Westchester Adult School in Los Angeles from 1975 to 1993.

Her works have been shown in numerous solo shows including at Occidental College, El Molino Museum, CSULA, Palos Verdes Art Center, San Pedro Municipal Art Gallery, and the San Marino Public Library. Group shows and competitions included the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Park, Pasadena Art Institute, Louis Newman Galleries, Brand Library, Laguna Art Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, Mt. St. Mary's College, Pacific Art Guild, San Bernardino County Museum, Cal State Chico, OMCA (Oakland), UW Parkside, Purdue University, and Norske Graphikere in Oslo.

She served on the Board of Directors for the Los Angeles Printmaking Society and was a member of the American Printmaking Alliance, International Mezzotint Society, Women Painters West (Los Angeles), South Bay Watercolor Society, and Pacific Art Guild.

Nancy's art spanned three-quarters of a century and was inspired primarily by landscape and geological formations, California architecture, plant and flower forms and organic materials.