 Blanche Hartman was born in Birmingham, Alabama to non-practicing Jewish parents in 1926.Educated in the Catholic school system in the early 1930s—and impressed with the religiosity and faith of one teacher—in 1943 she moved to California, where her father served in the military.After taking up biochemistry and chemistry at the University of California she married Lou Hartman in 1947, giving birth to four children, one of them being Nina Hartley, a porn actress.