Watercolorist and printmaker, Alice Ravenal Huger Smith was born in South Carolina on July 14, 1876.  She studied art at the Carolina Art Association and briefly with Helen Hyde.  Smith was greatly influenced by the Japanese style of printmaking.  She had access to an extensive collection of over four hundred ukiyo-e prints assembled by her cousin Motte Alston Read.  She eventually gave up working with woodblocks and devoted herself to watercolor. 

Smith died in Charleston, South Carolina in 1958.  A retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Carolina Art Association in 1978.