伊娃·鲁宾斯坦生于布宜诺斯艾利斯，那时她的芭蕾演员母亲正和她的画家父亲一起，在南美参加音乐会巡演。伊娃在巴黎长大，五岁开始学习芭蕾，二战时举家迁往美国，并在1946年获得美国国籍。从斯克利普斯女校毕业后，她来到UCLA学戏剧。1953年，她开始在纽约做舞者和演员。三年后她与William Sloane Coffin组建家庭，并有了三个孩子，直到1968年两人离婚。

1967年时，得益于Lisette Model & Diane Arbus的工作坊，鲁宾斯坦开始对摄影产生浓厚的兴趣。她不仅成为一名摄影记者，也为身边的人事物拍摄写真。包括人体写真和室内摄影，尤其是空无一物的房间。在法国摄影师弗兰特·霍瓦特对她的访谈中，她说到自己对摄影对象一直抱有敬畏之心，不希望刻意打扰他们。同时，她也是纽约视觉艺术学院（1972））和曼哈顿学院（1974-1975）的摄影教授。

EVA RUBINSTEIN was born in Buenos Aires where her mother, the ballerina NELA MŁYNARSKA, was accompanying her father, the pianist ARTHUR RUBINSTEIN, on a concert tour of South America. She was raised in Paris where she began to train as a ballet dancer at the age of five. In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, the family moved to the United States where Eva Rubinstein received American citizenship in 1946. She attended Scripps College in Claremont, California, and studied drama at the University of California, Los Angeles. From 1953, she worked as a dancer and actress in New York. In 1956, she married William Sloane Coffin and gave birth to three children, Anna, Alexander and David. The marriage ended in divorce in 1968.

In 1967, Rubinstein became seriously interested in photography, benefitting from workshops with Lisette Model and Diane Arbus. In addition to her work as a photojournalist, she has taken more intimate photographs of people, including nudes, and of (often empty) interiors. In an interview with Frank Horvat, she explained she had always shown great respect for the people she photographed, never wishing to intrude. She has also taught photography at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan (1972) and at Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York, (1974-1975).