Baroness Olga Vadimovna von Root was born in Sevastopol, Crimea in 1901. She was the daughter of Baron Vadim Nicholaievitch von Root, a Czarist military officer and nobleman, and Lubov Karlovna Kostsyushko-Valyuzhinich, a member of a Polish landed gentry family.^[1][2][3] Von Root's paternal ancestors were Volga German nobles who came to Russia during the reign of Peter the Great to serve in the Imperial Russian Army.^[2] Her maternal grandfather, Karl Kazimirovich Kostsyushko-Valyuzhinich, was Catholic and the founder of the Archeological Museum in Chersonesos.^[1][4] Her maternal grandmother, Maria Pavlovna Revelioti, was a Russian Orthodox woman of Greek descent and the granddaughter of the landowner, Russian general, and Greek revolutionary Theodosios Reveliotis. Through her mother, von Root was also a descendant of the Polish military leader Tadeusz Kościuszko.^[2]

Von Root was educated at the Smolny Institute of Noble Maidens in Saint Petersburg, where she trained as a singer.^[2] at the age of fifteen, she ran away and took up performing with a troop of Romani performers, learning their music and dances from Nikolai Kroutchine.^[3] She was later found and returned to her family.^[3]

During the October Revolution, von Root's family moved from Moscow to Kiev. Her father, loyal to Nicholas II of Russia, commanded troops in the White Army throughout the war.^[2] To support her family while her father was off fighting, von Root began singing in cabarets and night clubs.^[2][5] She was rounded up with other members of the White Movement by Bolsheviks during a raid, imprisoned, and was ordered to be executed.^[2] Her life was spared after a Bolshevik colonel, who recognized her from the stage, released her.^[2] The colonel later spared her mother and siblings from arrest during a raid on their home.^[2] The colonel informed von Root that her father would be granted amnesty if he defected from the White Army and joined the Red Army.^[2] She wrote to her father and persuaded him to change sides, after which he took a post as an instructor at the Soviety Military Academy.^[2]

During the rise of Communism, von Root became a star of the stage, as a singer and actress, performing under the name Olga Vadina.^[2][5][3] She was one of the top stars of post-Revolutionary Russia's concert theatre and had married her manager.^[2] She performed a program of Romani ballads at a theatre in Paris, later performing in other European capitals.^[3]

While living in New York City with her second husband, Armand Hammer, von Root worked with a musician to transcribe Russian and Romani music that she learned throughout her training.^[3]

In 1925, while performing in Yalta, von Root was introduced to the Jewish American millionaire industrialist Armand Hammer.^[2] The two fell in love and, after von Root obtained a divorce from her first husband in Moscow, she and Hammer were married in a civil ceremony in 1927.^[2][5][6] They had one son, Julian Armand Hammer, who was born in Moscow in 1928.^[5][2] The family left Moscow in 1930 and took up residence on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.^[2][3] She and Hammer divorced in 1943.^[5]

Von Root was the grandmother of American businessman Michael Armand Hammer and the great-grandmother of American actor Armie Hammer.^[5]