[1] Aracy Balabanian was born in Campo Grande, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.

At the age of fifteen, she moved to São Paulo with her parents and helped raise her seven younger brothers.

She passed the entrance exam for Social Sciences and for the Escola de Arte Dramática, coming to abandon the studies of Sociology, another entrance exam that she had taken and had been accepted, to devote herself to the theater.

She said that she lived in a time when it was considered ugly for a woman to do theater since women were formerly educated to be housewives and obey their husbands.

[citation needed] Balabanian died in Rio de Janeiro on 7 August 2023, at the age of 83.