She began her stage career at Max Reinhardt's acting school at the Deutsches Theater and belonged to his company from 1907 to 1909.

Her most notable performance was as the Madonna in the original spectacle-pantomime play The Miracle written by Karl Vollmöller whom she married in 1904.

[3] After divorcing Vollmöller, Norina married Georges V. Matchabelli, the Georgian prince and diplomat, in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1917.

She introduced many notable figures of the day to Meher Baba including Gabriel Pascal,[6] Mercedes de Acosta[7] and Karl Vollmöller (her first husband).

[8] In the early 1940s Matchabelli co-founded the Meher Spiritual Center with Elizabeth Chapin Patterson in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, U.S.[9] In the 1940s Norina Matchabelli gave a series of well-attended public talks in Carnegie Hall and other places in which she said she was delivering "thought-transmission" messages directly from Meher Baba.