Nino Agostino Arturo Mari Ferrari, known as Nino Ferrer, was born on August 15, 1934, in Genoa, Italy, to Franco-Italian parents.
He spent the first five years of his life in New Caledonia and then the war years in Italy.
Arriving in Paris in 1947, he lived there almost uninterruptedly until 1977, after which he moved to Quercy, where he remained until the end of his life.

He pursued higher education at the Sorbonne, earning a degree in letters with a focus on ethnology, the history of religions, prehistory, as well as Italian literature and philology.
He interned at the Musée de l'Homme in the prehistory department under the direction of André Leroi-Gourhan, participating in several excavation campaigns in France and Spain.
He was a member of the Sorbonne's university theater group, "Les Théophiliens," for two years.
He began drawing at the age of fifteen, during which time he discovered jazz and became a musician. He played bass with Richard Bennett and accompanied Bill Coleman and Nancy Halloway.

After performing for a while in left-bank cabarets (Le Port du Salut, La Polka des Mandibules) with his own repertoire, he formed his first rhythm and blues group and eventually recorded his first record in 1963.

He had an international career from 1965 to 1970. However, increasingly rebelling against show business, he chose to work only in France and became his own producer.