Alice was the daughter of Charles Thomas Brues, an entomologist at Harvard University and her botanist mother, Beirne Barrett Brues. Alice was a naturalist who specialised in botany. During her youth she was often assigned the task of collecting insects from plants by her parents and her mother in 1924 published a diary work of the families observations. In 1933, Alice graduated from Bryn Mawr College, majoring in philosophy and psychology. Later studying under Earnest Hooton, she obtained a PhD from Harvard in 1940 in physical anthropology.
