[8] Known as "Mosse", her mother was the daughter of opera singer Wilhelm Cappelle Kloed and had had a privileged childhood, including having been sent to Paris to learn French.

Her younger brother, Nils, when he was two suffered from tuberculosis for more than a year during which while her mother nursed her son and husband Ihlen spent time with her maternal grandmother in Larkollen.

[9] As the 1950s progressed the family's financial situation became strained as Ihlen's father lacked the lung capacity as a result of his tuberculosis treatment to work for an entire day in court.

Graduating at the age of 19 Ihlen took a number of jobs, including as secretary at an attorney's office in Oslo, Kristiania Shoe Store, the Norsk Bygdekino cinema, and in 1956 at the Save the Children charitable organization.

[10] In 1954, while travelling in a car with one of her girlfriends along Majorstua Street, they were approached by budding 22-year-old Norwegian avant-garde writer Axel Jensen, who invited her to a party.

Her father thought that Jensen, who came from a broken home, lacked a good education, a job and a place of his own to live, unlike the children of his middle class friends and acquaintances.

"[9] In mid-November, over her parents' objections, the reunited couple departed by train for Greece, with plans to be away for a year, with Jensen intending to spend the time writing.

Jensen had originally intended that they rent an apartment in Athens, but their friends suggested they could live more cheaply on the island of Hydra, which was three hours away by ferry.

[citation needed] After initially renting, Jensen used part of an advance of 40,000 kroner that he had received from Groth for his next book to purchase a house on Kala Pigadia Street on Hydra for approximately US$2,500.

[citation needed] The couple soon became a component part of the foreign community on the island, and friends with Charmian Clift and her husband, novelist George Johnston.

Ihlen remained on Hydra when it was necessary for Jensen to travel back several times to Norway to capitalise on the success of his novel, Ikaros – ung mann i Sahara.

[9] At the end of the charter Ihlen returned to stay with Per and Else Berit in Athens, who observed that the experience had transformed her into a serene and more confident person, who, while she still loved Jensen, was prepared to live without him.

Once the novel was published to great acclaim, Jensen used the incoming money to travel in October with Ihlen, Per and Else Brent to Stockholm, where via friends they purchased a Karmann Ghia.

[9] Ihlen temporarily moved in with her mother, as a week after his son's birth Jensen travelled back to Hydra in order to avoid paying Norwegian taxes.

At Cohen's urging, Ihlen left her son with him and travelled to Athens, where she maintained a vigil by Amlin's bed allowing Jensen to rest.

[2] After taking Amlin back to America and travelling around Mexico with John Starr Cooke, Jensen returned to Hydra in the summer of 1960 and rented a house in which to write.

Believing them to be trustworthy, she impulsively asked if they would take her six-month son back to his grandmother in Oslo, rather than him having to endure a long drive across Europe.

Ihlen occasionally modelled for Hydra-based artists, among them Anthony Kingsmill and Marcelle Maltais, whose painting of her resides in the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.

By the time Beautiful Losers was published in 1966 to disappointing sales and initially unsympathetic reviews, Cohen had come to the realisation that he would not be able to make a living as a writer.

Deciding in the winter of 1966 that she needed a break from Cohen, Ihlen took Axel Joachim along on a visit to her friend John Starr Cooke near Oaxaca in Mexico.

[21] In 1968, while living alone on Hydra, Ihlen met 20-year-old Nick Broomfield, with whom she had a nearly year-long relationship, during which she was instrumental in encouraging him to become a documentary maker and to make his first film, Who Cares?, in 1971.

[9] Consequently, Ihlen established a separate residence with her friend Carol Zemel who had recently moved to the city on Clinton Street on the Lower East Side.

Ihlen and her old friend Jean Marc Appert earned money as street vendors of toy cats, made on the spot out of steel wire and wool yarn.

While employed at Norwegian Contractors Ihlen met engineer Jan Kielland Stang, who had three daughters from a previous marriage and whom she knew from her youth.

[15] The back sleeve of Songs from a Room features a famous photograph of her at Cohen's typewriter, draped in a white towel in their house on Hydra.

[6] From a window in that home, Ihlen once saw a bird perched on a newly installed telephone wire and remarked to Cohen that they looked like musical notes; she suggested he write a song about it.

I have tried, in my way, to be free.About his song So Long, Marianne Cohen commented on the back cover of Greatest Hits, 1976: I began this on Aylmer Street in Montreal and finished it a year or so later at the Chelsea Hotel in New York.

[32] Molotkow described Del Rey as an artist, fully in control of her career, who, paradoxically, had chosen a performing persona as a weak and helpless female, who sought to surrender to powerful men.

[20][33] In June 2019 a collection of more than 50 love letters written by Leonard Cohen to Ihlen were sold at auction by Christie's for $876,000 with many selling for more than five times their pre-sale estimates.

The television series So Long, Marianne, coproduced by Norway's NRK and Canada's Crave, stars Thea Sofie Loch Næss as Ihlen and Alex Wolff as Cohen.