Olga Antonie Sellin was born on 2 November 1890 in Allenstein, East Prussia (now Olsztyn, Poland), and shared a home with thirteen brothers and sisters.

[4] In Berlin, she co-founded the Association for Ideal Culture and gave shows called "living pictures" in which she posed after the manner of ancient classical works of art.

[6] These so-called "Evenings of Beauty" (Schönheitsabende) were prohibited on more than one occasion starting from 1908, because the actors usually posed nude or wearing only bodypaint.

[4] The "heroine of living pictures", Olga Desmond became one of the first to promote nudity on the stage in St. Petersburg, Russia, when in the summer of 1908, the German dancer arrived there with her repertoire of performance.

Olga Desmond's Evenings of Beauty quickly became the subject of a great debate in the Russian media.

The authorities in St. Petersburg paid little attention to the explanations offered by the dancer from Berlin, and her first appearance in the imperial Russian capital was also her last: further shows were forbidden by the mayor.

For example, Konstantin Makovsky sharply denounced what he called the "cult of the naked body", saying that "beauty, like much else in life, must have its hidden secrets, that we don't even have the right to expose."

In 1909, her appearance in the Berlin Wintergarten was the cause of such a scandal that it became a subject of discussion even in the Prussian State Assembly.

Her first appearance took place on 15 April 1917 at the Theatre of the Royal University (Theater der Königlichen Hochschule) in Berlin.

In 1919, she published a pamphlet, Rhythmograpik, which included a new method of writing down dances and transcribing the movements into special symbols.

[13] After the First World War, she married her second husband, Georg Piek, a Jewish businessman with a studio for stage equipment, decorations, and special fabrics.

[16][17] Otto Skowranek's series of photos of Desmond's sword dance is held at Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.