The granddaughter of writer Ernest Hemingway, she gained independent fame as a supermodel in the 1970s, appearing on the covers of magazines including Cosmopolitan, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and Time.

Her later years were marred by highly publicized episodes of addiction and depression, before her suicide from a drug overdose around July 1, 1996, at the age of 42.

[11] Margaux struggled with several disorders beginning in her teenage years, including alcoholism, depression, bulimia, and epilepsy.

[14] Hemingway was 6 feet (1.8 m) tall and had success as a model, including her million-dollar contract with Fabergé as the spokesmodel for Babe perfume in the 1970s.

[17] During the height of her modeling career in the mid- to late 1970s, Hemingway was a regular attendee of New York City's exclusive discothèque Studio 54, often in the company of such celebrities as Halston, Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli, Grace Jones, and Andy Warhol.

[18] She followed this with a supporting role in the Italian horror film Killer Fish (1979), opposite Lee Majors and Karen Black.

[20] Despite her attempts, Hemingway's budding film career began to falter, and she took roles in several B-movies, including Killing Machine (1984) and Inner Sanctum (1991).

Shortly before her death, she was set to host the outdoor adventure series Wild Guide on the Discovery Channel.

Four months later she moved from Idaho to New York City to live with Wetson at 12 East 72nd Street, which was owned by heiress Gloria Vanderbilt.

[a] She had taken an overdose of phenobarbital, according to the Los Angeles County coroner's toxicology report one month later,[25] although her family had difficulty accepting the fact of her suicide.

She had gotten herself back together",[27] but in a December 2005 episode of Larry King Live, Mariel said she now accepted her sister's death as a suicide.