Nichols was born as Barbara Marie Nickerauer to George and Julia Nickerauer, and raised in Queens, New York. She began modeling for pinup magazines in the late 1940s. In the mid-1950s, she moved to Hollywood and began appearing regularly in second leads in a number of films including Miracle in the Rain (1956), The King and Four Queens (1956), The Naked and the Dead (1958), The Pajama Game (1957), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), That Kind of Woman (1958), Where the Boys Are (1960).