Nyota Inyoka was born in Pondicherry[1] and raised in Paris,[2] the daughter of a French mother and an Indian father, though she was sometimes billed as being "Egyptian", "Persian", or "Cambodian".

[6] Nyota Inyoka's dances and costumes appealed to a wider Western fascinations with the exotic, ancient, and "oriental", in the 1920s and beyond.

Nyota Inyoka conjured up historic pictures, with childlike native grace and baby smile, strangely consorted with rapt moods of the East," commented a reviewer in The New York Times, continuing in a similar vein to describe her "cherubic but elastic torso, whirlwind arms and gyrating legs".

[11] Sensational reports in the American press described her as haunted, cursed, mysterious; some even posited "death threats" that awaited her in India because of her revealing costumes, presumably to heighten interest in her performances.

[13] Sculptor Paul Landowski made a series of small bronze dancing figures based on Nyota Inyoka in 1947.