[1] Russell was born in Maida Vale, London, England,[2][3][4][5][6][n 1] and was educated at St Felix School at Southwold, Suffolk, at Harrogate College and in Brussels and Paris.

[5] In one of Russell's comic routines she said that some of the world's greatest teachers had completely ruined her voice, going on to relate that she was interrupted early in her graduation song recital by the Royal College's judges who indicated her singing was a joke.

[citation needed] Russell's mother was Canadian, and the family returned in 1939 to Toronto, after her father's death, where she began to appear on local radio stations as an entertainer.

Russell's first one-woman show as a parodist was sponsored by the Toronto Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire in 1942, though it was the Canadian conductor Sir Ernest MacMillan who really set her on her international career as a "musical cartoonist", when he invited her to take part in his annual burlesque Christmas Box Symphony Concert in 1944.

In 1963, with Robert Paine Grose and Joan White, she founded Grow Productions, Inc., which presented Lady Audley's Secret at the New York World's Fair in 1964.

She composed, wrote, and performed her own material for Columbia Records, was the author of The Power of Being a Positive Stinker (1955) and the Anna Russell Songbook (1958), and was the President of the B & R Music Publishing Company.

Giving advice on how to be a successful singer, she quipped that although a glorious voice was important, "it helps to be an independently wealthy, politically motivated, back-stabbing bitch."

Russell retired to Unionville, Ontario, Canada, in the late 1960s, living on a street named after her, but she went on several "farewell" tours in the 1970s and 1980s, including one-woman shows at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Carnegie Hall parodying opera divas who did the same.

This unusual circus pantomime, which combined performing acts with a play, featured Sydney actors Colin Croft, Keith Little, Anita Roberts, Peter Williams and Ron May.