She was born in Paris, and grew up in Venice, where her paternal grandfather Professor Carlo Malagola of Bologna kept the archives at the Frari basilica, and then in Rome.
Alexandra and Guido lived in Venice and Rome and Carla was educated by Roman Catholic nuns, along with her siblings, Anna-Viola and Francesco.
Francesco, later known as Francis Dunbar Marshall Malagola (1918–2001), was an artist whose works are conserved in a wide range of European collections and museums.
[citation needed] During the Second World War, she served as a nurse with the Red Cross at the Principessa Piemonte hospital in Rome.
Her interior design skills and instinctive eye were spotted and she assisted John Fowler and Sybil Colefax to renovate Chevening and worked with Nancy Lancaster.
She was a member of the Fund's first committee, alongside Sir Ashley Clarke (former British ambassador in Italy), John Julius Norwich and Mrs. Natalie Brooke (wife of the secretary of the Royal Academy).
[citation needed] She was also a founder of the League of Friends of the Italian Hospital in London from 1956 until it closed in 1989, a vice-president of the British-Italian Society for 50 years, a trustee of the Rosehill Arts Theatre, a trustee of the Chichester Festival Theatre Trust from 1962 to 1988, and a vice-president of the Council of Friends of Westminster Cathedral from 1993.