At age 6, Marinoff, who was nicknamed Fanny as a child, was smuggled on board an overcrowded passenger ship headed to America.

A year later, Marinoff made her stage debut as a little boy in Cyrano de Bergerac at the El Itch Theater.

In 1914, Marinoff married American writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten.

[6] Nella Larsen dedicated her book Passing to Marinoff and Van Vechten.

[8] In the last few years of her career, she volunteered at the Stage Door Canteen entertaining troops from 1942 to 1945.