Jennifer, born Elizabeth Marshall, was the daughter of film star Jack Holt and Margaret Wood Holt, with an older half-sister from her mother's previous marriage, Imogene, and a brother, Charles John Holt III, nicknamed Tim Holt.
Jennifer's paternal grandmother was the great-granddaughter of John Marshall, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835, while her paternal grandfather, the first John Charles Holt, was an Episcopal minister from Virginia.
The Holt family resided in Beverly Hills, California, and had a ranch in Fresno. When Jennifer was seven years old, she went to Belgium with her governess, Mademoiselle, for a year-long visit that lasted two and a half years.
By 1931, Jennifer's parents had separated, and she joined her mother and Imogene in Scarsdale, New York, before moving with them to Santiago, Chile. Upon returning to California, Jennifer attended The Bishop School in La Jolla and reestablished a relationship with her brother.
Jennifer studied acting with Russian actress and teacher Maria Ouspenskaya after completing high school, and also studied music with aspirations to become a singer. She later performed at the Peterborough Players in New Hampshire for a year, appearing in productions of "The Babbitt", "The Far Off Hills", and "Our Town", supervised by playwright Thornton Wilder.
Finding few opportunities on Broadway, Jennifer returned to Hollywood and met Jerry Colonna's agent, Bruce Geer, while visiting her brother at a rodeo in Reno, Nevada. Geer negotiated a deal with producer Harry Sherman for a part in the Hopalong Cassidy film "Stick to Your Guns" (1941),where she was billed as "Jacqueline Holt".
Following the film's release, Jennifer signed a six-year contract with Universal Pictures using the professional name "Jennifer Holt". She starred in numerous films alongside notable actors, including William Boyd, Russell Hayden, Rod Cameron, Johnny Mack Brown, Tex Ritter, Eddie Dean, and Lash La Rue.
In her later years, Jennifer attended events such as the Raleigh Western Film Fair in 1989 and the Sierra Film Festival in Lone Pine, California in 1992.
Jennifer passed away during a visit to Dorset, England, UK, at the age of 77.
