Minnie Lichtenstein was born in Dallas in 1882. Her father Meyer Lichtenstein had immigrated from Königsberg, Germany and her mother Hattie Mittenthal had come from Russia via Peoria, Illinois. She married Herbert Marcus in 1902 and gave birth to the first of their four sons Stanley Marcus in 1905. The Marcus family and the newly married Carrie Marcus Neiman and Abraham Lincoln Neiman who were her sister in law and her husband then moved to Atlanta, Georgia to do sales promotion work.