Marlowe was born at the Beaconsfield Hotel, St Kilda, Victoria[1] on 18 February 1884.

[2] She was educated at home by a governess who encouraged her love of reading and writing[1] and also attended a convent in Windsor and studied singing and dancing.

[5][6] She went to London in 1910 where she performed with Stanley Cook's company, playing Sally Grace in The Man From Mexico.

[8] In 1920 Marlowe returned to Australia where she was employed by the Sydney Sun, writing theatre reviews under the pseudonym "Puck".

Gilbert Mant considered her 1923 novel, Gypsy Royal, Adventuress, "the most clever and realistic novel of modern Australian life that has yet been produced in this country."