Irene Catherine Ahlberg was born November 6, 1910,[citation needed] in Albany, New York.

Her mother, Anna Freya, born in New York to Austrian parents, was a real estate agent.

Her first movie was Society Girl, in 1932 at Fox Film Corporation uncredited together with names like James Dunn, Peggy Shannon and Spencer Tracy.

The second film, which quickly made her a star, was Chandu the Magician, also released in 1932 and directed by Marcel Varnel.

[citation needed] Author Gregory William Mank wrote in Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff the Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration, (McFarland & Company), (2010), that Ware lived in Encinitas; had "Severe dementia"; and that she died in the evening, of "Pneumonia", in the Western Medical Centre, Santa Ana.