Nina Alexandrovna Tikhonova was born on 23 February 1910 in Saint Petersburg to writer and publisher Alexander "Serebov" Tikhonov, and Varvara Vassilievna Zubkova, who had previously been married to Anatole Tchaikevitch.

The family was separated during the Russian Revolution, and Varvara's children from both marriages lived with their grandmother in Yekaterinburg, before later returning to Saint Petersburg.

At the age of 11, Tikhonova and her elder stepbrother Andre Tchaikevitch fled Soviet Russia, taking refuge first in Berlin, then Paris.

[1] She made her debut at the age of fifteen with the Theatre Romantique Russe, which was founded in Berlin by Boris Romanov.

[2] In July 1931, Tikhonova, with the Ida Rubinstein Company at Covent Garden, performed as Alcine in a rendition of Léonide Massine's ballet set to Georges Auric's music.

[1] Between 1942 and 1944, Tikhonova also danced with Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo and thereby avoided some of the brutality of the Nazi occupation of France.

[3] After her retirement, Tikhonova created her own ballet school in Paris on Conservatoire Russe on the Quai de New York.