Maria (Dolla) Xanthopoulou was born in 1919 in Patras and was the daughter of Socratis Xanthopoulos and Eugenia Trianti. Her brother, Panagiotis Xanthopoulos, was sixteen years older than her. She spent her early teenage and school years at a French school in Switzerland. She graduated from the German School of Athens in 1938. In 1942, she married Alexandros Bouratinos, an engineer, but their marriage was prematurely interrupted by Alexandros' death in the mid-1940s due to peritonitis. In 1949, she married Konstantinos Vovolinis, and they went on their honeymoon to Rhodes. In 1952, they had a daughter, Alexandra Vovolinis. She was a volunteer nurse with the Red Cross and actively participated throughout the German Occupation. She was fluent in French and German.