[1][2] She started her career as a belly dancer, wearing provocative costumes in the style of Mata-Hari, and adopted her exotic stage name.

[5] May-Yong married in Magdeburg, purportedly into the Schenck zu Schweinsberg [de] noble family.

In October 1914, months after the onset of World War I, she arrived in New York from Rotterdam on the ship Rotterdam, as Baroness Alice Schenk zu Schweinsberg, married and living in Berlin, but listing her father, Max Scharrer, living in Magdeburg, as her closest relative.

[8] May-Yong made her first known appearance in a movie in 1919 as Queen Nyleptha in Allan Quatermain, the first film adaptation of the 1887 novel.

After some 25 movies, her last known roles were in 1923 in Das Kabinett des Dr. Segat and in 1925 in Entsiegelte Lippen.