[3] Damien initially worked as a model and actress playing bit parts with the Théâtre du Châtelet,[3] but by 1909 was performing as a dancer, using the stage name Marise Damia, with Max Dearly in London.

Despite this, her career evolved slowly, taking second billing for a number of years but with help in her stage presentation from the American dancer, Loie Fuller, she eventually became a singing star.

At the beginning of World War I she opened Le Concert Damia, in Montmartre, where she became the first star ever to have a single spotlight trained on her face, bare arms and hands.

A few years later she did a farewell tour, ending her more than forty-year career in a double bill with Marie Dubas in front of a full house at the Paris Olympia.

When asked in 1974 by the Anglo-French biographer David Bret to divulge the secret of her long life and fabulous voice, Damia replied, "Three packs of Gitanes a day!"