[1] Born and raised in Rome, Italy,[1] Romalı Perihan was the sister-in-law of Her Majesty The Queen Soraya.

Before pursuing a career as a singer at the age of seventeen, she briefly attended the Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D'Amico.

[1] Romalı Perihan was the Honorary President of the Cultural Foundation of Poets Ashiks and Writers (Turkish: Şair Ozan ve Yazarlar Kültür Derneği).

[2] She acted in multilingual cinema chiefly from 1960 to 1982, doing several films in Italian with renowned director Federico Fellini, for whom she was a favourite subject.

[2] She also acted in films directed by such well-known artists as Antonio Margheriti, Dino De Laurentiis, Remzi Aydın Jöntürk, Roberto Bianchi Montero, Sergei Bondarchuk, Yılmaz Güney, and Zeki Alasya.

[1] Two years later, she married the 33-year-old Bijan, Prince Esfandiari-Bakhtiari (15 October 1937, Isfahan – 29 October 2001, Paris) who was the second and youngest child of Prince Khalil Khan Esfandiary (1901–1983), a Bakhtiari nobleman and Iranian ambassador to West Germany in the 1950s, and his Russian-born German wife Princess Eva "Evchen" Karl (1906–1994).

[10] As a result of her polyglotism and eclectic, wide-ranging repertoire of contemporary and narrative songs in Italian and Turkish, Perihan, in her mid-twenties, performed periodically as a soloist in Asım İslamoğlu[11] and Fahrettin Aslan's several different luxurious locations featuring Turkey's most prominent artists, including Zeki Müren.

[11] Staged in support of her classical LP recordings and comprising a set list of songs from that and some other albums, she wore a US$27,000 costume called "Khurram Sultana" (surrounded by a double row of 72 black pearls from Singapore) during the event.

Produced by Nino Varon and arranged by Onno Tunç, "O Bendim O" was released through Kervan Plakçılık, in association with Nova Stereo, in 1976.

Her LP Romalı Perihan'ın Arabesk Dünyası was released by Polat Tezel and was a commercial success.

[13] In 1990, Federico Fellini wanted her cast in the leading role in his then-upcoming film La voce della luna;[14] however, she regretfully refused since she was busy with wedding preparations in Germany.

[2] Romalı Perihan was a very close friend of Ülkü Adatepe,[15][16] one of the eight adopted children of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who is the founder of the Republic of Turkey.

Among Perihan's close companions were Erol Simavi, Geraldine Chaplin, Sakıp Sabancı,[6] Novella Parigini, and Yılmaz Güney.