Beatrice St. Julien Ravenel was the daughter of the poet Beatrice Ravenel and her first husband, Francis 'Frank' Gualdo Ravenel (1869-1920), whose mother was the writer Harriott Horry Ravenel. Frank died in 1920, and in 1926 Beatrice acquired a stepfather, Samuel Prioleau Ravenel, who may have been a distant cousin of her father. Through their common great-great-grandfather Daniel Ravenel (1762-1807), she was a third cousin of the artist Alice Ravenel Huger Smith.
