Jennifer, born Elizabeth Marshall, was the daughter of film star Jack Holt and Margaret Wood Holt; she had an older half-sister from her mothers' previous marriage, named Imogene and a brother, Charles John Holt III, nicknamed Tim Holt. She would later change her name to Jennifer for professional reasons. The granddaughter of industrialist Henry Morton Stanley Wood of St. Paul, Minnesota, the owner of American Hoist & Derrick, known world-wide for their steam shovels, emigrated from England. Her paternal grandmother was the great-granddaughter of John Marshall, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court 1801-1835. Her grandfather, the first John Charles Holt, was an Episcopal minister also of Virginia.
The Holt family lived in Beverly Hills, California and had a ranch in Fresno. When she was seven-years-old, Jennifer went to Belgium with her governess "Mademoiselle", where the year-long visit lasted for two-and-a-half years. By 1931, on her return, her parents had separated and she joined her mother and Imogene in Scarsdale, New York briefly before moving with them to Santiago, Chile. Upon returning to California, Jennifer attended The Bishop School in La Jolla and, after years of separation, she was able to reestablish a relationship with her brother; in fact, her first date was with Hal Roach Jr., Tim's roommate from Culver Military Academy.
Jennifer studied acting with Russian actress and teacher Maria Ouspenskaya her first year out of high school. She also studied music and wanted to be a singer. Later, she studied and performed at the Peterborough Players in New Hampshire for a year, appeared 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. While visiting her brother Tim at a rodeo in Reno, Nevada, she met Jerry Colonna's agent, Bruce Geer, who was able to negotiate a deal with producer Harry Sherman of Colonna's services for a part in the Hopalong Cassidy film Stick to Your Guns (1941), she was billed as "Jacqueline Holt". Following its release, she signed a six-year contract with Universal Pictures using the professional name of "Jennifer Holt". In her film career, she starred with William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy), Russell Hayden, Rod Cameron, Johnny Mack Brown, Tex Ritter, Eddie Dean and Lash La Rue.
In her later years, Jennifer attended events like the Raleigh Western Film Fair 1989 and Sierra Film Festival in Lone Pine, California 1992.
She died on a visit in Dorset, England, UK at age 77.
