During her life Roekiah was a fashion and beauty icon, featuring in advertisements and drawing comparisons to Dorothy Lamour and Janet Gaynor.

Roekiah was born in Bandoeng, Preanger Regencies Residency (now in West Java), Dutch East Indies, in 1917 to Mohammad Ali and Ningsih, actors with the Opera Poesi Indra Bangsawan troupe;[2] Ali was originally from Belitung who traveled with Royal Comedy troupe in 1913, while Ningsih was of Sundanese descent and came from Cianjur.

[9] In 1937, Roekiah made her first film appearance as the leading lady in Albert Balink's Terang Boelan (Full Moon).

She and her co-star Rd Mochtar[b] played two lovers who elope so that Roekiah's character need not marry an opium smuggler;[6] Kartolo also had a small role.

[11] Despite the success of Terang Boelan, its production company Algemeen Nederlandsch Indisch Filmsyndicaat stopped all work on fiction films.

[11] Now jobless and depressed after the death of her mother, according to journalist W. Imong, Roekiah "kept silent, constantly musing as if she were mentally disturbed".

[12] After the troupe returned to the Indies, most of the cast switched to Tan's Film,[13] including Roekiah and Kartolo; the two also performed with the Lief Java kroncong group.

The film, in which Roekiah played the title role – a young woman who must fend away the advances of a gang leader while falling in love with a fisherman (Rd Mochtar) – closely followed the formula established by Terang Boelan.

The Teng Chun's Java Industrial Film, for instance, paired Mohamad Mochtar and Hadidjah in Alang-Alang (Grass, 1939).

Possibly inspired by a poem of the same name by Lie Kim Hok, the film featured Roekiah in the title role, portraying a long-suffering wife who remains faithful to her husband despite his infidelity.

[23] The film was well-received, earning 1,000 gulden on its first night in Surabaya,[24] but was ultimately unable to return profits similar to Terang Boelan or Fatima.

In the film, Roekiah played a young woman who, with the help of her lover, is able to reunite her blind aunt (Annie Landouw) with her estranged husband (Kartolo).

[30] Another review, for the Singapore Free Press, wrote that "Roekiah fills the part of the heroine in a most praiseworthy manner".

[31] In April of the following year Tan's released Roekihati, starring Roekiah as a young woman who goes to the city to earn money for her ailing family, ultimately marrying.

[38] Film production in the Indies declined after the Japanese occupation began in early 1942; the overlords forced all but one studio to close.

[41] After a hiatus of several years, Roekiah also acted for the studio, taking a role in the short Japanese propaganda film Ke Seberang (To the Other Side) in 1944.

[43] The date she died was also the day of Japan's surrender which formally ended World War II and the occupation.

After the Dutch military launched Operation Kraai on 19 December 1948, capturing Yogyakarta, Kartolo refused to collaborate with the returning colonial forces.

[45] The remaining children were brought to Jakarta after the Indonesian National Revolution ended in 1950, where they were adopted and raised by Kartolo's close friend Adikarso.

One, Rachmat Kartolo, went on to be a singer and actor active up through the 1970s,[41] known for songs such as "Patah Hati" ("Heartbroken") and films such as Matjan Kemajoran (Tiger of Kemayoran; 1965) and Bernafas dalam Lumpur (Breathing in the Mud; 1970).

[2] Another fan, recalling a performance he had witnessed over fifty years earlier, stated: Roekiah always left her audiences riveted to their seats when she began crooning her kroncong songs.

[44] Imanjaya describes her as one of the industry's first beauty icons; he also credits her and Rd Mocthar with introducing the concept of bankable stars to domestic cinema.

[o][1] In 1977 Keluarga magazine styled her one of Indonesia's "pioneering film stars",[p][2] writing that hers was "a natural talent, a combination of her personality and the tenderness and beauty of her face that was always filled with romance".