She was the only child of a merchant from Brooklyn, New York (before it was part of New York City), Charles Edward Smith (son of Brooklyn mayor Cyrus Porter Smith), and his wife Corinne Colman (sister of the painter Samuel Colman). The family was based in Manchester for the first decade of Smith's life, but they moved to Jamaica when Charles Smith took a job in 1889 with the West India Improvement Company (a financial syndicate involved in extending the Jamaican railroad system). The Smiths lived in the capital, Kingston, for several years, traveling to London and New York.
