[3][4] She told many stories of her background, including an aristocratic family, a castle as her birthplace, and a doctorate earned at the University of Vienna or the Sorbonne;[3][5][6] but she was considered a "charming fabulist", and her accounts were not always consistent or verifiable.

[7] Mill worked as a model, actress, and nightclub performer in Vienna as a young woman.

From 1950 to 1965, Preminger "renounced the glitter and the gloss" of her Hollywood social life[8] and spent several months a year in Africa with Albert Schweitzer, assisting in his work at a hospital in the Congo.

[15][16] Mill's divorced her first husband, Mueller, to marry director Otto Preminger in Vienna in 1931.

[7] She died from a heart attack at her home on Park Avenue in 1972, probably in her 60s (though the New York Times gave her age at death as 58).