Marcia Lewis was born in Melrose, Massachusetts and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was a registered nurse at the The University of Cincinnati Hospital and Mount Sinai Hospital (Manhattan) and received her RN from the Jewish Hospital School of Nursing in Cincinnati in 1959. Marcia Lewis made her Broadway debut in the original production of Hello, Dolly!, taking over the role of Ernestina. Additional theater credits include The Time of Your Life (1969), Annie, taking over the role of Miss Hannigan in April 1981, Rags (1986) (nominee, Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical), Roza (1987), Orpheus Descending with Vanessa Redgrave (1989), and the 1990 revival of Fiddler on the Roof as Golde. Lewis appeared in the 1994 revival of Grease as Miss Lynch, and was nominated for the Tony Award, Best Featured Actress in a Musical. She appeared as the Matron in the 1996 revival of Chicago. For her work, she received nominations for the Tony Award, Best Featured Actress in a Musical and Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical. She appeared at the Off-Broadway Theatre of the Zanies in An Impudent Wolf (1965), the Players Theatre in Who’s Who Baby? (1968), and Playwrights Horizons in Romance Language in 1984 and When She Danced in 1990.

Marcia Lewis toured in Cabaret as Fraulein Schneider and appeared in Chicago at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, for three months. Her television credits include guest appearances on The Bob Newhart Show (1975), Baretta (1975), The Bionic Woman (1976), Happy Days (1977, 1979), the TV movie When She Was Bad (1979) and Kate and Allie (1988). As a singer, Lewis performed in most of the leading cabarets and supper clubs in Manhattan, including Rainbow & Stars, Upstairs at the Duplex, Upstairs at the Downstairs, Grande Finale, Reno Sweeney’s, Freddy’s Eighty-Eights, Town Hall, The Village Gate, and the Russian Tea Room. Lewis also appeared in concert at Carnegie Hall. Marcia Lewis’ solo album Nowadays (1998), a collection of showtunes and standards recorded with the Mark Hummel Quartet, is available on the Original Cast Records label. Lewis and Fred D. Bryan, a Nashville financial adviser, were married on June 24, 2001. Marcia Lewis died on December 21, 2010, at her home in Brentwood, Tennessee, of cancer, aged 72.