Marie Severin was born in Long Island, New York. She had secretly aspired to be a stained glass artist, but was encouraged by her brother, John Severin, to work as a comics colorist at EC Comics. She colored nearly all the classic EC titles, providing an important role on the comics' atmosphere. When EC continued with solely the black-and-white magazine MAD, Marie worked as a colorist for Atlas/Marvel for many years, and touched nearly every single Marvel character ever created.

As an artist, Marie Severin has worked on titles like 'The Incredible Hulk', 'Tales to Astonish', 'Strange Tales', 'Sub-Mariner', 'X-Men' and, together with her brother John, 'Kull the Conqueror'. Between 1967 and 1969 she was a prominent artist for Marvel's parody title 'Not Brand Ecch', and later worked for the company's other humor titles Spoof, Crazy! and Arrgh!. Marie was assigned to Special Projects under Sol Brodsky and John Romita Sr. in the 1980s. Special Projects handled any non-comic book licensing job, from toy maquettes to designing movie costumes. They also handled movie and television tie-ins like 'The A-Team'. They initiated the short-lived Marvel Books children's book division.