A great-granddaughter of Tsar
Nicholas I of Russia, she was born in
Nice and grew up in the last period of Imperial Russia, mostly in
Znamenka, her father's summer palace near
Peterhof. She was a maternal granddaughter of
Nicholas I, King of Montenegro. Princess Marina was a gifted artist, showing talent for drawing and painting. She studied painting first with a teacher from the senior school in
Yalta and then in
Saint Petersburg under professor Kordovsky.
Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna suggested Princess Marina as a likely bride to the
Duke of Montpensier, son of the
Count of Paris. During
World War I, Marina served as a
nurse with Caucasian troops near
Trabzon. She escaped the
Russian Revolution with the rest of her family aboard the British ship in 1919. She married Prince Alexander Nikolayevich
Golitsyn (13 October 1885 - 24 March 1973) in 1927. She died on 15 May 1981 in
Six-Fours-les-Plages,
France, at aged 89. ==Notes==