Nina Levi grew up in the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia. At the age of 14 she attended a French boarding school with her sister Erika Levi in the Bulgarian city of Rousse.
Like all Jews in the capital, in 1943 Nina Levi had to move to the provinces with her parents Abraham and Mary, and her sister. However, a doctor friend, Pavel Gerdjikov, warned the family they risked being deported abroad. The Levis trusted Gerdjikov and hid in his medical practice.
In January 1944 the house where they were hiding was hit during an air raid. Gerdjikov took Nina Levi and her family to a village outside Sofia. There, they used forged papers to assume identities as a non-Jewish family, and lived in accommodation rented by Gerdjikov. All of them survived.
In 1948 Nina Levi emigrated to Israel with her family. She later lived in Paris, where she called herself Yael Ambash.