Ida Lublenski was born on August 20, 1886 in Odesa, then part of the Russian Empire.

Her family emigrated to the United States when she was two years old and lived on the Lower East Side of New York City.

[1] The first of her plays to be staged was Helena's Boys, debuting at Henry Miller's Theatre on Broadway in April 1924.

The play, starring Minnie Maddern Fiske in the title role and based on a story by Mary Brecht Pulver, was about a woman who curbed the radicalism of her two sons by pretending to radical behavior herself, including drunkenness and free love.

[2] Her play Love Kills, debuting at the Forrest Theatre in May 1934, starred Vivian Giesen as a woman named Pearl who takes a series of lovers before jumping out of a window.