Best known as the Teutonic beauty who sang alongside Lou Reed on The Velvet Underground’s 1967 debut album, Nico — born Christa Päffgen — was a Zelig of contemporary culture. She worked as a fashion model in Berlin and Paris, played a bit part in Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita,” embedded with Andy Warhol’s Factory and had an affair with the French film star Alain Delon (with whom she had a son). Music was her life’s connective tissue; she spent decades after her Velvet Underground moment as a solo performer, writing and performing in her bewitching contralto.

The Italian filmmaker Susanna Nicchiarelli’s affectionate and unflinching new film “Nico, 1988” focuses on the final chapter of the icon’s life. An unrecognizable Nico — she appears in the first scene as a heavyset brunette — is seen living in relative obscurity in a modest apartment in Manchester, England. While still in thrall to the heroin addiction from which she suffered for many years, she is consumed with a need to create. “I was annoyed by the fact that she appeared in rock biopics only in relation to men she had moments with,” Nicchiarelli says. “After the early ’70s, people thought she disappeared, but that’s really when her life started — when she was writing her own songs.” To celebrate the film’s release, seven female musicians will take the stage at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge on Thursday evening and perform from the icon’s songbook. They spoke with T about Nico’s extraordinary life and voice, and her influence on their own music.