Born in Vienna on 19 November 1927. Emigrated to Buenos Aires together with her parents in 1938. Initially studied art and worked in the film industry, contributing to over 50 documentaries. After discovering her love for photography, she spent two years in Brazil. In 1960, she moved to New York, where she worked as a freelance photographer for publications such as Time, Newsweek, The New York Times and Life, as well as the Associated Press. In the early seventies, Steiner and her psychiatrist husband, Michael Meyer Monchek, moved to Pound Ridge, New York, where she still lives today.
The photographer has donated a considerable portion of her archive of drawings and photographs to the Austrian National Library in Vienna.
