Her professional career began at one of the Atlantic City, New Jersey beauty pageants where she won honors as Miss Long Island.

[6] She met entertainer Harry Richman and married him[7] on April 16, 1938,[8] in Palm Springs, California.

[12] Playboy night-club singer Harry Richman[13] was well known for his earlier romances with Clara Bow, Dorothy Darrell, showgirl Edith Roark, Virginia Biddle, Lina Basquette, Peggy Hopkins Joyce, and Lenore Ulric.

Shortly after their wedding, Forbes contracted pneumonia and was saved, in part, through the use of the drug sulfanilimide.

In 1929, she was in Harry Rosenthal and His Bath and Tennis Club Orchestra, 1930 she was in The Fight[14]& Seeing-Off Service,[15] and in 1934 she was in the movies Bachelor Bait,[16] If This Isn't Love[17] and Down to Their Last Yacht.

She is buried in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.