She is a French freelance journalist and a reporter and columnist for Glamour magazine. She is the widow of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan in early 2002.

Pearl, being of Dutch-Jewish, Afro-Latino-Cuban and Chinese Cuban ancestry and raised in Paris, Van Neyenhoff met Daniel Pearl while he was on assignment in Paris.

They married in August 1999, lived for a time in Mumbai, India where Daniel was the South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, and later traveled to Karachi, Pakistan to cover aspects of the war on terrorism. Their son Adam Daniel was born in Paris three months after his father was killed.

Pearl's memoir, A Mighty Heart, which deals with the events surrounding her husband's kidnapping and assassination, was adapted for the film A Mighty Heart. Co-produced by Brad Pitt, Andrew Eaton and Dede Gardner and directed by Michael Winterbottom, the film stars Angelina Jolie and Dan Futterman as Mariane and Daniel Pearl.

Mariane Pearl is a practicing Nichiren Buddhist and a member of Soka Gakkai International.

In July 2007, Pearl filed suit in U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York against terrorists and a bank which may have financed them, for their alleged roles in the abduction, torture and murder of her husband. Those named in the suit include Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Habib Bank. On October 24, 2007, the lawsuit seeking damages against al-Qaida, a dozen reputed terrorists and Pakistan's largest bank was dropped. Lawyers for Mariane Pearl noted that Habib Bank Limited and the other defendants in the case had not answered the lawsuit filed in July (although Habib Bank Limited had denied ever supporting terrorism), but they otherwise did not explain their reason for dropping the action. A spokesman for the lawyers has stated that the withdrawal was due to personal reasons and should have no bearing on the merits of the lawsuit.

Pearl is a member of the honorary board of the Daniel Pearl Foundation[http://www.danielpearl.org] with international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, former President Bill Clinton, Pakistani philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi, president of Stanford University John L. Hennessy, founding Nightline anchorman Ted Koppel, Queen Noor of Jordan, Palestinian professor and president of Al-Quds University Sari Nusseibeh, violinist Itzhak Perlman, Nobel Peace Prize winning author Elie Wiesel, Daniel Pearl's parents Ruth and Judea Pearl, and others.