Charlene was born in Ohio and graduated from Youngstown University in the mid-1960s, where she met her first husband, poet Frank Polite, and got married.
After completing her studies, Charlene pursued a career in regional theater, including a stint at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, where she was awarded a post-graduate scholarship.
She later relocated to San Francisco, California, to work at the American Conservatory Theater, which was founded by the renowned stage director and Tony Award nominee William Ball, whom she had met in Pittsburgh.
Charlene divorced her first husband in the late 1960s and remarried to actor Ramon Bieri, with whom she lived in Northridge, in the San Fernando Valley.
Following the end of her film career in 1976, Charlene divorced Bieri and moved to San Diego with her stepson, where she resumed her acting career in regional theater.
In the late 1980s, Charlene's health began to decline, and she returned to Youngstown, Ohio, to be near the family of her first husband, where she ultimately passed away due to complications from breast cancer.
Throughout her life, Charlene was described as a true child of the 1960s, spiritual, extravagant, and eccentric, with a great sense of humor, and was a stunningly beautiful red-haired woman who sacrificed her film career to devote herself to raising her stepson.
