With her parents, the journalist Roberto Gatica and Leonie Boisier, Gatica moved to New York in 1928 where she attended elementary and secondary school, as well as studying languages and music.

Her first public appearance occurred as a singer at the age of 16 on NBC, where her father worked.

Later, in Buenos Aires, she studied theater at the Conservatoire Cunill Cabanellas.

In 1948 in the US, she married Eugene Fell, an American military attaché at the Mexican Embassy; they had a son, Leon.

In 1995, she received the Orden al Mérito Gabriela Mistral, issued by the Ministry of Education of Chile in recognition of his outstanding and long career.