Her father, Francis Charles John Graigoe Jenkin KC, was an employee of the Great Western Railway (according to the 1901 census), who then joined the Royal Fusiliers in 1902.

She went on to make a number of motion pictures for London Films under the Korda brothers, Alexander and Zoltan, the best known of which is 1933's The Private Life of Henry VIII, in which she portrayed Jane Seymour.

The following year, she moved to the United States and made her first Hollywood film for Fox opposite Spencer Tracy in the romantic comedy It's a Small World, followed by Under Your Spell with Lawrence Tibbett.

In 1939 she starred with Richard Greene and Basil Rathbone in the 20th Century Fox version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and with Lucille Ball in RKO's Five Came Back.

[8] During 1948 and 1949, she hosted a DuMont Television Network comedy for children featuring a cowboy puppet called The Adventures of Oky Doky.

[10] She continued to appear on network television on panel shows and as a guest star in the early 1950s, and also as a spokesperson for commercial products, including a stint as the original Revlon saleswoman on The $64,000 Question during its first months on air.

On January 11, 1954, a new The Wendy Barrie Show premiered from the studios of WHIO-TV in Dayton, simulcast on Taft Broadcasting's WKRC-TV in Cincinnati and WTVN-TV (now WSYX) in Columbus.

[15] She was reportedly engaged to and had a daughter named Carolyn with the infamous gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, and at one time was married to textile manufacturer David L. Meyer.