 Born in Petrograd, Belinky came to Brazil with her family when she was ten years old, fleeing from the civil wars in the then Soviet Union.At eighteen, after completing a preparatory course on Mackenzie University, she began working as bilingual secretary in Portuguese and English.At twenty she enrolled at the Philosophy course of Faculdade São Bento, but she abandoned it then when she married the doctor and educator Júlio Gouveia in 1940.