Born in Berlin, Barbara Sommer Feigin fled Nazi Germany in 1940 with her Jewish father, Lutheran mother, and seventy-nine other refugees.

Feigin earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science at Whitman College before completing a graduate business degree in a joint program with Harvard Business School and Radcliffe Graduate School. She went on to work in marketing and advertising in New York City, highlighted by an illustrious thirty-year career at Grey Advertising (now Grey Global). Feigin has three sons, including identical twins. She lives in New York City.