Montez was born María Antonia García Vidal de Santo Silas (some sources cite María África Gracia Vidal or María África Antonia García Vidal de Santo Silas as her birth name) in Barahona, Dominican Republic. She was one of ten children born to Ysidoro García, who worked as the Spanish consul in Dominican Republic, and his wife Teresa. Montez was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. In the mid-1930s, her father was appointed to the Spanish consulship in Belfast, Northern Ireland where the family moved. It was there that Montez met her first husband, William G. McFeeters, whom she married at age 17. In the book, “Maria Montez, Su Vida” by Margarita Vicens de Morales, 2003 edition, on page 26, there is a copy of Maria Montez birth certificate proving that her original name was Maria Africa Gracia Vidal. Her father’s name was Isidoro Gracia (not Garcia) and her mother’s name was Teresa Vidal. On page 54, there is a copy of a fake biography made by Universal Pictures, where it says that Maria Montez was educated in Tenerife and that she lived in Ireland, which was never true. Maria Montez lived the first 27 years of her life in the Dominican Republic.

Her beauty soon made her the centerpiece of Universal’s Technicolor costume adventures, notably the six in which she was teamed with Jon Hall—Arabian Nights (1942), White Savage (1943), Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944), Cobra Woman (1944), Gypsy Wildcat (1944), and Sudan (1945). Montez also appeared in the Technicolor western Pirates of Monterey (1947) with Rod Cameron and the sepia-toned swashbuckler The Exile (1948), directed by Max Ophüls and starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.  Montez went on suspension for refusing the lead in Frontier Gal; her role was taken by Yvonne de Carlo who had become a similar sort of star and began to supplant Montez’s position at the studio.  By the early 1950s, Montez’s career in the United States began to wane due to audiences’ changing taste in films. Montez and her second husband, French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont, then moved to a home in Suresnes, Île-de-France in the western suburb of Paris under the French Fourth Republic. There, Montez appeared in several films and a play written by her husband. She also wrote three books, two of which were published, as well as penning a number of poems.

Montez was married twice. Her first marriage was to William G. McFeeters, a wealthy banker who served in the British army. They married when Montez was 17 years old and later divorced.  While working in Hollywood, she met French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont. They married on 14 July 1943 at Montez’s home in Beverly Hills. Aumont had to leave a few days after their wedding to serve in the Free French Forces fighting against Nazi Germany in the European Theatre of World War II. At the end of World War II, the couple had a daughter, Maria Christina (also known as Tina Aumont), born in Hollywood on 14 February 1946.  The 39-year-old Montez died in Suresnes, France on 7 September 1951 after apparently suffering a heart attack and drowning in her bath. She was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris where her tombstone gives her amended year of birth (1918), not the actual year of birth (1912).