Renu was born into a Punjabi family. She applied to the direction program at the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune in 1974, but was not accepted and ended up on the editing program instead. She graduated in 1976 and began a career as a film editor in India, a field dominated by men at the time.[4][5]
The first offer that Renu got from outside the circle of FTII filmmakers was Govind Nihalani's Ardh Satya, filmed in 1983. After this her career took off, including a stint with Doordarshan.
Chopra's Parinda was among the first mainstream films that Renu edited, and she also assisted direction. Unlike the smaller films which were made in one schedule, with the entire film completed before she started editing, Parinda was a more complex production shot over a period of three years.
Her elder sister Radha Saluja was a film actress, who worked in numerous Hindi, Punjabi and other regional films, and younger sister Dr. Kumkum Khadalia is a plastic surgeon. Renu married director Vidhu Vinod Chopra, a fellow FTII alumnus when they graduated in 1976. They later worked together on Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (1983), where Vinod was the production manager and she was the editor. Even though they later separated, she continued to edit all his films and was his assistant director. Later in life, she became close with director Sudhir Mishra, many of whose films she worked on, including Dharavi and Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin (1996).[10][11]
She died in Mumbai, on 16 August 2000, after a long bout of stomach cancer.[8]
Legacy
In 2006, GraFTII, the Alumnus association of FTII released a book on her titled, 'Invisible - The Art of Renu Saluja'.[9] In a 2005 interview, noted director, Sudhir Mishra, said that the principal character, Geeta in his acclaimed film, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2005), "..is the amalgamation of all the spirited women I've known, my tribute to Renu Saluja.".[12] Later in 2006, she became the first editor to have Editing Award named after her.[13]
In June 2009, GRAFTII, an Alumni Association of the FTII and E-City ventures, held a tribute festival of her films, including a documentary in which all the directors Saluja worked with shared their memories of her.[14]