Beatrice was raised by Beguines at Zoutleeuw after her mother's death, then educated at the Cistercian abbey of Bloemendaal (Florival). She entered the Cistercian Order, was sent to help found the daughter house of Maagdendal at Oplinter, and ended her career as prioress of the new abbey of Nazareth near Lier, which she helped establish in 1236.
Her great work is the Seven Manieren van Heileger Minne — 'Seven Manners of Holy Love' — written in Middle Dutch and the earliest substantial work of theological prose in any vernacular Netherlandic language. The treatise traces seven progressive 'manners' or movements of the soul's love-of-God, culminating in a state of 'minneoorlog' — 'love-war' — in which the soul lives in a perpetual passionate longing for God that exceeds present satisfaction.
Her writing — direct, fiercely personal, theologically subtle — stands at the head of the great Flemish-Brabantine mystical tradition that would produce Hadewijch a generation later and Jan van Ruusbroec in the next century. She died at Nazareth in 1268. Her cult is observed by the Cistercian Order; she has not been formally canonized.