Marcus was born in The Cedars, Dallas, Texas, the son of Herbert Marcus Sr., who later became a co-founder of the original Neiman-Marcus store with his sister Carrie and her husband, Al Neiman. Stanley was the first of four sons born to Herbert Sr., and his wife, the former Minnie Lichtenstein. The pregnancy indirectly led to the eventual founding of Neiman-Marcus, as Herbert Sr. decided to leave Sanger's, where he was a buyer of boys' clothing, when he deemed his raise insufficient to support a family.Rose G. Biderman. They Came to Stay: The Story of the Jews of Dallas 1870–1997. 2002, Eakin Press. () Returning from two years spent in Atlanta, Georgia, establishing a successful sales-promotion business, the Marcuses and Neimans used the $25,000 made in the sale of that business to establish their store at the corner of Elm and Murphy. Given that the family's other option for the money was to invest in the then-unknown Coca-Cola Company, Marcus loved to say that Neiman-Marcus was established "as a result of the bad judgment of its founders."Stanley Marcus (1974). Minding the Store: A Memoir, 1993 Plume edition, p. 1. In his memoir, Marcus recalled his father as "affectionate" and his mother as even-handed in her attention to each of their children, making sure even into their adulthood to give them equivalent gifts and make sure they were praised equally.Minding the Store, p. 17.
