She was born and grew up at Bussum, a small town located between Amsterdam and Utrecht, and close to the (subsequently reclaimed) southern part of the Zuiderzee.
[3] The academy was housed in a brand new building with modern plastic ceilings, carpet block flooring and a permanent smell of "paint" in the air.
[3] Ten years later it would be determined that the headaches were part of an allergic reaction to the chemical gases given off by the exotic materials used in the interior construction of the modern academy building.
[2] She combined this with a teaching job at the Amsterdam Fashion Academy of which she became a director in 1973 and where, according to her husband she brought about a change of culture by attracting guest-lecturers from industry.
[1][2] Her first book was published in 2004 - "Het Nederlandse sieraad in de 20ste eeuw" dealt with the Dutch jewellery business during the twentieth century, thereby filling a perceived gap in the academic literature.
[7] At the same time as she was completing her doctoral dissertation Marjan Unger and her husband made a substantial donation of 492 pieces of jewelry from her collection to the Dutch National Museum ("Rijksmuseum") in Amsterdam.
[9] Marjan Unger's second book, "Jewellery Matters", was written jointly with the Rijksmuseum curator Suzanne van Leeuwen and was published in 2017.