Marabel Morgan was born in Crestline, Ohio. When she was three years old, her father deserted her family. After graduating from high school, she worked in a beauty shop to earn tuition for university. She studied Home Economics at Ohio State University, and was elected as the university's May Queen in 1960, but had to leave before graduating due to financial reasons. After leaving school, she again worked in a beauty parlor. In 1964, she married Charlie Morgan, Jr., a student at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Although being a housewife delighted her in the beginning, by 1970 she had concerns about the health of her marriage. She contemplated the problem, and decided that she needed to accept her husband's faults and change herself to make him and herself happy. She once wrote, "It's only when a woman surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships him and is willing to serve him, that she becomes really beautiful to him. She becomes a priceless jewel, the glory of femininity, his queen!" In 1971, she began to hold Total Woman seminars, where she lectured on marriage, across the country. She also became a regular (and controversial) guest on the Phil Donahue Show. In 1974, she published her first book, The Total Woman, which went on to be the biggest bestseller of 1974, selling approximately four million copies. She followed this book with several others, including The Total Woman: Total Joy, Total Woman Cookbook, and The Electric Woman. As the feminist movement gained momentum, Morgan became equated with anti-feminism.
In 1967, Morgan was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 1987. She currently works for New Magnetic Products, a health equipment company.
