Harriet Gene Roudebush, watercolorist and etcher, was born to Harriet and Daniel Roudebush in Portland, Oregon on July 26, 1908. The family moved to Sacramento, California in 1916 and then to Oakland where she studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1925. She then studied for four years at the California School of Fine Arts on scholarship. In the 1930 U.S. Census, she was living with her mother in the city of Eden in Alameda County, California.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Roudebush was known for her etchings of the San Francisco Bay area which were sold in tourist shops and art galleries along San Francisco’s Fisherman's Wharf. She exhibited with the San Francisco Society of Women Artists in 1931, Galerie des Beaux arts in San Francisco between 1930 and 1933, Worden's Gallery in San Francisco between 1932 and 1942, the Sausalito Trade Fair in 1952, and various San Francisco Art Fairs between 1957 and 1969. Solo exhibitions of her work were mounted in 1975 at the Carmel Foundation and Monterey Library. Pacific Grove in 1994. Her works are held in St. Mary's College in Moraga.

In the 1940 U.S. Census, she is listed as the wife of the dance instructor Sony Chang and they resided in San Francisco, California. They moved to Sausalito in 1950 and then to Pacific Grove in 1972 where he died in 1974. Harriet moved to Camel, California and resumed using her maiden name.

Harriet Roudebush died on January 2, 1998 in Carmel, Monterey County, California.