Born Tamara Yevsevievna Rekemchuk (Russian: Тама́ра Евсевиевна Рекемчу́к) in 1919 in Cetatea Albă, Bessarabia to a Ukrainian journalist father with Georgian antecedents and a nurse mother of Armenian descent.

[1] Her maternal grandfather, Kristapor Chinaryan, was an Armenian landowner who survived the Hamidian massacres by the Ottoman Empire.

[1][2][3] In the 1920s, the family moved to Paris, where her father had sought a journalistic career and one day took his daughter to see a performance of the Ballets Russes.

[6] Meanwhile, Yevsevy worked for the Soviet Secret police but was arrested, imprisoned and finally shot in 1937 during the Great Purge.

[3] In 1940, Tchinarova's grandfather, Kristapor, 88, and his wife were murdered by Soviet troops, who stormed their home and bayoneted them.

[1][2] In Paris, choreographer George Balanchine noticed Tchinarova and her classmates, and chose them for dance performances in operetta productions, notably, Orpheus in the Underworld.

[7] Tchinarova and classmates Irina Baronova, who became a fast friend, Tatiana Riabouchinska and Tamara Toumanova were dubbed Balanchine's "Baby Ballerinas" and known as the "Russians who have never danced in Russia.

During that tour she was elated when the critic, Arnold Haskell, described her performance in Léonide Massine's Les Présages, as "brilliant" and "outstanding".

[8] Two years later in 1938 accompanied by her mother, she returned to Australia with another de Basil troupe, the Covent Garden Russian Ballet.

[5] In 1939, at the conclusion of the Covent Garden Russian Ballet tour, along with a number of her colleagues, Tchinarova and her mother opted to stay in Australia.

Tchinarova taught at the Frances Scully School of Dancing while her mother worked in a factory, stitching women's underwear progressing later to making ballet costumes.

[9][2] Having retired from performing, Tamara Finch initially worked as a Russian interpreter for trade delegations to and from the Soviet Union, but this gave way to a return to the world of ballet helping many English-speaking dance companies, including The Australian Ballet, during tours to Russia, and for Russian companies touring in the West.

The couple separated in 1956, after Tchinarova discovered his affair with actress Vivien Leigh during filming in Los Angeles.