Born in Dutch East Indies (part of present-day Indonesia). In 1968 she resigned from her job as secretary of the Dutch consulate in Manhattan to become a call girl earning $1,000 a night. A year later she opened her own brothel, the Vertical Whorehouse, and soon became New York City's leading madam. In 1971 she was arrested for prostitution by New York police and forced to leave the United States.
She came to be best known for her best-selling memoir The Happy Hooker: My Own Story, 1971.