Born on 30 April 1877 in San Francisco to a Jewish family of Polish origin, she studies music and piano in San Francisco and then Seattle before moving to Europe. She settles in Paris in 1907 and meets Gertrude Stein soon after her arrival, moving in with her shortly afterward and becoming her companion for the rest of her life.

She runs the couple’s household and receives, alongside Stein, the artists and writers passing through rue de Fleurus, including Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso and Matisse, keeping conversation with the wives and companions of guests just as Stein does with the artists themselves; cook, secretary, confidante, lover, muse, editor and critic, she remains long in the background until Stein publishes The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in 1933, a first-person account under her name but written by Stein herself.

After Stein’s death on 27 July 1946, she publishes several books, including her own cookbook interwoven with memories (1954) and then her autobiography, What Is Remembered (1963), and looks after her companion’s legacy. She dies on 7 March 1967 in Paris, aged eighty-nine, and is buried in Père-Lachaise, next to Stein.