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Hunt grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where her father was one of America`s first black psychiatrists. She studied at the University of California, Berkeley went to Berkley in 1964 and joined Jerry Rubin on protest marches against the Vietnam War. In the mid 1960s Hunt moved to Britain and for a time lived in Edinburgh. "I started hitching here, a student from California`s Berkeley, at 19. I hitched on lorries from London, slept in Waverley Station."
In 1967 Hunt met Mike Ratledge of the Soft Machine. Hunt was having trouble getting a visa extension to stay in England and proposed to Ratledge. Ratledge and Hunt were married on April 15, 1967. The Soft Machine were heavily booked and there was no time for a honeymoon but Ratledge and Hunt were able to spend two months together before the band headed for France later that year. Hunt and Ratledge had a short relationship but remained married and the best of friends for many years.

Hunt achieved national fame in England in 1968, when she starred as "Dionne" in the first rock musical, Hair, a box office smash on The London Stage. "What was great about Hair, was that it was my hair. The person on the stage in 1966 was merely an evocation of who I was," says Hunt. Hunt was professionally associated with musicians such as Mike Ratledge, Alexis Korner, John Mayall, Elton John, and Marc Bolan. Hunt played at the Isle of Wight music festival in 1969 with her backup band White Trash. Hunt`s first single, a cover of Dr John`s Walk on Gilded Splinters was released on Track Records in 1969; an album, Woman Child, followed in 1971. Hunt met Marc Bolan in 1969 after having a minor hit with Dr. John`s "Walk on Gilded Splinters." "She showed up one night while we were recording "Unicorn," said Tony Visconti. "The two of them just looked at each other and it was like magic. You could see the shafts of light pouring out of their eyes into each other. They were eating each other up alive. We finished the session unusually early, and Marc and Marsha walked out into the night hand in hand." Hunt says in her autobiography that the relationship was based on more than physical attraction. "I personified things which Marc rejected. He was reclusive, macrobiotic, and professed aversion to success," writes Hunt. "To Marc, my visibility was commercial, and this wasn`t appropriate to the serious art of music which he implied was validated by obscurity." In 1973 Hunt was a member of a panel organized by British magazine Melody Maker to discuss women in music and their options open to black women. "You got to slip in through the side-door as the statuary representative - and once you`re in, then you do your damage," said Hunt. "But you`re kidding yourself if you think you`re going to get in on your own terms."

In 1968 Hunt posed nude for photographer Patrick Lichfield after opening night for Hair and the photo appeared on the cover of British Vogue`s January 1969 issue. Almost 40 years later Hunt again posed nude for Litchfield recreating the pose for her Vogue Magazine cover after she had had her right breast and lymph glands removed to halt the spread of cancer. The photo appeared on the cover of her 2005 book Undefeated about her battle with cancer. "The 1968 photo was taken after the first night of Hair and that the 2005 shot was taken in January, five weeks after my right breast and lymph nodes under my right arm had been removed. I enthused about how wonderful it had been working with Patri

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