Berber is an icon of modern expressive dance and German silent film of the 1920s. She was born into an artistic family; her father was a violinist and her mother an actress and singer. Berber grew up in Munich and Berlin and made her début as a ballet dancer in Berlin at age of 17. A tour of Germany in 1919 was extremely successful and received enthousiastic reviews in the quality press.

In order to escape the restrictions of her household, she entered a marriage of convenience in 1919 to a certain Nathusius. But two years later she left him to live with her lover Susi Wanowski. She lived excessively, drank heavily and fron the eraly 1920s was addicted to the fashionable drug of the day, cocaine.

Otto Dix painted famous portraits of Berber in her mid-twenties, which caricaturated her as a worn out, old woman. She became infamous for the scandals she caused, smashing champagne bottles over the heads of punters sitting near the stage where she performed.

In 1925 she married the gay American dancer Henri Chatin-Hofmann, and together they tried to live a less excessive life and to build up a collaborative career. In 1928 on a trip to North Africa she collapsed and died form the effects of tubercolosis.

The gay German film-maker Rosa von Praunheim paid homage to Berber in his 1987 film Anita - Tänze des Lasters (Anita - The Dances of Sin).