Details about Zara's early life are known primarily from her own witness and their accuracy may be in question.   By her own account, she was born on the Arabian peninsula but sold as a child by her father into slavery.  She resented him for the rest of her life and her hatred of him became an obsession with undermining powerful men that drove her behavior going forward.
 
She first came to public attention in the winter of 1943, when Helen Armstrong, daughter of a U.S. Senator, sough the assistance of Army Intelligence in determining if her participation in a new religion - The Cult of the Crimson Flame - had anything to do with her father's recent heart attack.  The Cult had threatened those who prevented supplicants from participating in the Cult's rituals.   Colonel Steve Trevor and his aide, Lt. Diana Prince attended one of the cult's meetings but the Senator, once recovered, instructed them to abandon the investigation.

A short time thereafter, a crimson flame appears suddenly above Diana's typewriter,  As it burns, words appear on the page, warning Diana that she and Trevor are meddling in occult affairs beyond their kin.  Learning from Etta Candy that Helene has disappeared, Steve goes to the Armstrong residence only to be re-buffed by Armstrong's nurse, who reveals that Helene's disappearance has caused another heart attack to the Senator.  Unbeknownst to Trevor, Armstrong's nurse is a spy for the Crimson Flame who reports Trevor's visit to Zara, the high priestess.

Returning to the office, Trevor sees a new girl at a top=secret file-cabinet and warns her off but when Diana Prince opens it, a sudden puff of flame knocks her out.  The new girl, also a cultist infiltrator, realize she has the wrong victim and quickly stuff Diana in the file cabinet and has it delivered to the Cult under the pretense of disposing of it.  En route, Diana recovers and switched to Wonder Woman, bursting out of the cabinet as the cultists attempt to burn it. Diana locates Helene but she refuses to abandon the cult after seeing a message appear on her arm threatening her father.  She flees with Wonder Woman in pursuit but escapes and circles back to Zara and the two escape.

Wonder Woman and Trevor deduce that Zara has fled to the Cult's  headquarters in her native Arabia.  Flying there in the invisible jet,  Wonder Woman, Etta, Trevor and several girls from Holiday College acquire horses and approach the Cultist Citadel.  After a brief battle they are captured and bound with flaming bonds.  As Helene is to be inducted in the cult, she recants at the last moment and is sentence to death.  Wonder Woman intervenes but is hampered by the bonds.  Trevor managed to get the key and free her and Zara is quickly captured and forced to reveal that she is the true master of the cult and the pyrotechnics, not magic, explain the cult's phenomena.  Zara is then removed to Transformation Island for reform (Comic Cavalcade #5).