After his father's death when he was four, he was raised at the Ghica family's estate in Ghergani, where he received a rich musical and literary education.
Meanwhile, Romania's entry into World War I in 1916 found him a sixth-year student, and Magheru left for the front as a second lieutenant combat medic.
He contracted a recurring fever and epidemic typhus, but refused to take leave and remained in the war-torn Moldavia region until demobilization.
Magheru never sought for his plays to be staged, even though they are hardly lacking in well-crafted scenes, a modern dramaturgical vision and debates about moral and philosophical issues.
Isolated between his laboratory and a circle of friends drawn from the contemporary artistic elite (including George Enescu, Jean Alexandru Steriadi, Theodor Pallady, Henri Catargi, Dumitru Ghiață, and Iosif Iser), he continued to write after 1944, but stopped publishing.