Margarita Terekhova was born on August 25, 1942 in the town of Turinsk, Sverdlovsk Oblast. In school, Margarita was interested in sport and was a basketball captain. She finished school with a gold medal.

From 1959 she studied at the physics and mathematics faculty at the Tashkent State University from 1959 until 1961. After that she went to Moscow and tried to get into VGIK but her application was declined. After that she enrolled to study at the school-studio of Yuri Zavadsky at the Mossovet Theatre.

After her graduation in 1964 she worked for many years as an Actress of the Mossovet Theatre. From 1983 to 1987 she acted in the theatre group "The Puppet Show" organized by her and Igor Talkov.

Terekhova's acting debut was in 1965 in the film Hello, That's Me!. Margarita became particularly popular in the late 1970s, after the release of a costumed musical TV films The Dog in the Manger and D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers. At first she played the capricious Countess Diana de Belflor, in the second - the treacherous Milady. Leading roles followed in films made by Directors including Andrei Smirnov and Ilya Averbakh (Monologue, 1972) as well as the dual-role in Andrei Tarkovsky's acclaimed Mirror (1975). And more international co-productions came after, including George Cukor's The Blue Bird (1976) and Konrad Wolf's Mama, I'm Alive (1977). Terekhova's subsequent work in film proved her high level of acting expertise but did not reach such great success as her earlier work.

Starting from 2005 Margarita no longer plays in a theater, not in films and almost never gives interviews. Since 2011 she rarely appears in public and hardly ever attends public events.