Aline Griffith was born on May 22, 1923 in Pearl River, New York, USA. She was married to Luis Figueroa y Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno. She died on December 11, 2017 in Madrid, Spain.
She went to Spain during WWII as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (a CIA forerunner) to gather information on Nazi sympathizers, including Franco. She fell in love with a Spanish count and, after the war, became a member of Spain's jet set. She carried a pearl-handled pistol in her handbag for many years. She told her husband only on the night before their wedding that she had been a US agent. He persuaded her to give up spying for good, but she later said she continued occasionally to engage in clandestine work for the CIA.
As a young woman, her poise and looks attracted modeling agents, and she was hired as a model for fashion entrepreneur Hattie Carnegie in Manhattan.
Model, socialite, member of the OSS, she wrote spy novels under the name of Aline, Countess of Romanones, partly based on her life. Her husband was the grandson of Spanish minister Álvaro de Figueroa, 1st Count of Romanones.