Fatma Nazlı Ecevit was born in Istanbul, as Constantinople the then capital of the Ottoman Empire, on 4 January 1900.
She went on to study at the Fine Arts School for Girls (Ottoman Turkish: İnas Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi)[6] between 1915 and 1922, where she was taught by Ömer Adil, and joined the workshop of Feyhaman Duran.
[2] As the graduating examinations for the Fine Arts School for Girls were cancelled due to the Turkish War of Independence, she obtained a teaching certificate.
[2] The next year, she gave birth to a son, Bülent, who went on to become a political party leader and four times prime minister.
Her works present a realist and impressionist style that she developed in the Fine Arts Union, of which she was a member and for some time also its chairperson.
[2][7] Her style resembles that of Turkish painters of the 1930s' generation like İbrahim Çallı, Şeref Akdik, Ali Karsan and Adil Doğançay and she had a powerful sense of design.