N. was born on 15 October 1891in Nowo-Mińsk (now Mińsk Mazowiecki, Poland), Warsaw Gubernia, Poland. Her father was the owner of a rope factory. She learned in a private school, and she learned Yiddish from a rabbi's wife. As an active member in the "Kleiner bund," she often traveled as an emissary to Warsaw, and later in Nowo-Mińsk she participated in "amateur" offerings of Shliferstein's "Dora" (under the direction of the author) in "Koldunye" to benefit a worker's kitchen. Here she was arrested, and after her release she went away to Warsaw.

Through her acquaintance with the actress Losha Yakubovitsh, she was taken in as a chorus singer into an itinerant troupe that had performed in Kolo and soon, after performing as an actress, as "Tsila" in Gordin's "Kreutzer Sonata," she remained there to act in roles. For two years she toured across Poland, and in 1910 she came to Lodz, where she performed again as a chorus singer in the "United Troupe." For a short time she withdrew from her stage activity and then, through Shumsky, she returned to Odessa and joined Sabsey, later again with Fiszon where she was in the chorus for four years, performing part-time in small roles, and then for five years as an actress in prominent roles. Later she acted in Riga with Kompaneyets in Bobruisk's Soviet State Theatre, in Warsaw with Kompaneyets and Tselmeister, in Lodz's "Polish Theatre" (Dir. -- Kompaneyets), where she created the role of "Vitskenea" in Sudermann's "Yohanes feyern." Then for several months she was in Vienna, where she performed under the name