Merlin Stone was born in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York. She attended P.S. 217 and Erasmus Hall High School, where she graduated in 1949 with a Metallic Art Medal Award. After enrolling at the University of Buffalo later that year and marrying in 1950, she continued her studies while raising her children, ultimately earning a B.S. and teaching certificate in art (with a minor in journalism) from the institution in 1958. She became interested in archaeology and ancient religions from her study of ancient art.

From 1958 to 1967, she worked as a teacher and sculptor, exhibiting widely and executing numerous commissions. During this period, she was divorced from her first husband in 1963 and taught at Buffalo State College as an assistant professor of art (1962) and her alma mater (by now a SUNY university center) as an assistant professor of sculpture (1966).

In 1968, she received an interdisciplinary M.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts. While based in Oakland and Berkeley, California from 1967 to 1972, she taught at the University of California, Berkeley’s extension program, commenced research into ancient culture in earnest and expanded her practice to include kinetic sculpture, liquid light shows, performance art and collaborations with engineers.

After residing in London (1972-1974; 1975) and Quadra Island, British Columbia (1974-1975), she and her life partner, Lenny Schneir, met in Miami Beach, Florida in 1976 while Stone (who had been recently widowed by her second husband) was serving as a caregiver for her father. They lived in New York City until 2005, when they relocated to Daytona Beach, Florida. She was diagnosed with pseudobulbar palsy in 2008 and died of dementia complications in 2011.

Stone’s book When God Was a Woman had a profound effect on the international Goddess movement of the 1970s and 1980s. She was featured in the 1989 documentary Goddess Remembered.