She began formal music education at the National Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of Ruhollah Khaleghi, a towering figure in Iranian music. Khaleghi was not just a mentor but a father figure to his students, instilling in them both technical prowess and a profound love for their cultural heritage. Mahin’s education also placed her under the guidance of other luminaries such as Abolhassan Saba and Hossein Tehrani. Her first piano lessons were with Javad Marouf, and she later studied both Western and Iranian piano tuning with Emanuel Malik Aslanian and Morteza Mahjoubi, respectively.
The narrative of Mahin’s life is intertwined with that of her father, Nasrollah. Like Mahin, he was an accomplished musician who lived and died in relative obscurity. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he, like many of his colleagues, was forced into retirement. He passed away in 1988 in silence, with a quatrain by the Sufi poet Ohad al-Din Kermani etched on his tombstone: “In the path of God, two Kaabas have come to fruition… One Kaaba is the face and one Kaaba is the heart… so that you can visit hearts… which is more than a thousand Kaabas, one heart has come to fruition.”