Alice Boughton was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1865. She studied painting in Paris and Rome, and then at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn before becoming an assistant at the studio of photographer Gertrude Kasebier, a member of the Photo-Secession movement. Boughton then opened her own studio in 1890; it remained open for nearly 40 years. She became known for her portraits of New York's prominent literary and theater figures, and of her images of nude women in allegorical settings.

Her work was published in 'Camera Work' in 1909 and in 1928 a collection of her portraits, titled 'Photographing the Famous', was published by Avondale Press. Portraits she took included that of Eugene O'Neil, Maxim Gorki, Yvette Guilbert, W.B. Yeats, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. Exhibitions include the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.