About Margret Rey

Margret Elizabeth Rey (born Margarete Elisabeth Waldstein; May 16, 1906 – December 21, 1996) was a German-born American writer and illustrator, known best for the Curious George series of children's picture books that she and her husband H. A. Rey created from 1939 to 1966.

Margarete Elisabeth Waldstein was born on May 16, 1906 in Hamburg, German Empire, the daughter of Gertrude (Rosenfeld) and Felix Waldstein. Her father was a member of the Reichstag. She studied art at Bauhaus in Dessau, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and the University of Munich between 1926 and 1928 and afterward worked in advertising. In 1935 she left Germany for Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil to escape Nazism (Nazi Germany) – and to meet Hans Reyersbach, a salesman and another German Jew from Hamburg, who had been a family friend. They married in 1935 and moved to Paris, France, in 1936.