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Édith Jéhanne was born near Nohant-Vic, France in 1902. It is not certain whether she was born under this name, or if she took it as a stage name. Likewise, nothing is known about her family or her upbringing. Some sources (probably copying each other) claim that she was the sister of actress Sylvia Grey (1866-1958), yet this is rather doubtful: Grey was 36 years her senior and British.
Jéhanne's acting career began in the early 1920s: Between 1922 and 1930, she starred in eight productions, of which four were directed by Raymond Bernard, including the epic "Le joueur d'échecs" ("Der Schachspieler", FR 1927). Bernard was a patron and confidante of Jéhanne, if the two were also linked romantically, remains unknown.
Yet it was G.W. Pabst who directed Jéhanne in her most famous role: as the title character of "Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney" (1927), in which the daughter of a French journalist falls in love with a Bolshevik officer during the Russian Civil War. Jéhanne's second to last film was Bernard's period piece "Tarakanova" (FR 1930), in which she played both the daughter of Katharina II and her doppelganger. Shot in 1929, the feature was eventually released in September 1930, after it had been retroactively made a sound film.
Following her last bit part in "Quand nous étions deux" (FR 1930), people lost trace of Jéhanne. According to French film scholar Christine Leteux, Raymond Bernard had later insinuated that Jéhanne had passed away shortly after the introduction of sound. Yet since this information is as unconfirmed as her presumed early death, Édith Jéhanne remains a mysterious figure of film history.