Norina Matchabelli was born Eleanora Gilli in Florence, Italy, in 1880, the youngest of five children of Luigi Gilli, a Swiss confectioner originally from Samedan, and Emma Troll of Winterthur. As a young woman, under the stage name Maria Carmi, she was chosen by the director Max Reinhardt to play the Madonna in the pantomime The Miracle, written by her first husband, the German author Karl Vollmoeller. She later married Prince Georges Matchabelli, a Georgian national hero, and in December 1923 the couple moved to America, where she performed on the New York stage and Georges founded the Prince Matchabelli Perfume Company.

Norina was an old friend of Jean Schloss and at first mocked the idea of worshipping a living Master. Yet from the moment Meher Baba landed in New York in November 1931 she found herself weeping continuously, and when she met him at Harmon tears of ecstasy rolled down her cheeks. She recognized him as Christ personified, and from that first meeting Baba established in her an unconditional faith that lasted her whole life. Baba later named her Nurjehan, "light of the world."

Through the early 1930s she travelled for Baba's work in America and Europe, arranging his visits and interviews. In December 1936 she arrived in India with Elizabeth Patterson and other Westerners to live in Baba's ashram at Nasik, where she was given overall charge of the ashram. After the 1937 stay at Cannes she returned to India and, from November 1937, lived with the women mandali at Meherabad, where Baba assigned her writing work. In 1939 she lectured publicly about Baba in Mandla and Bangalore with Dr. Deshmukh and Nadine Tolstoy, and she worked on the plans for a large ashram near Bangalore and on the editing of the Meher Baba Journal.

In May 1941 Baba sent Norina, Elizabeth Patterson and Nadine Tolstoy back to America to spread his message and find a property for a spiritual center. Together with Elizabeth she located the land at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which was finalized in October 1944 and became the Meher Spiritual Center. In New York she continued to lecture on spiritual themes and gathered younger seekers around her.

In July 1947 Norina and Elizabeth flew back to India, although Norina had been seriously ill with a heart condition. They stayed on Meherabad Hill and later with the women mandali at Meherazad, where she worked with Dr. Deshmukh on a second volume of her Fragments from a Spiritual Diary. Norina died at noon on 15 June 1957 at Youpon Dunes, Myrtle Beach, at the age of 77, after prolonged heart trouble. Baba cabled, "Be happy my very dear Norina has come to live with me forever." Her ashes were interred on Meherabad Hill, and her tombstone reads: "Princess Norina who is and will ever remain Baba's."