 In 1915, Davis' parents separated, and Davis attended, for three years, a spartan boarding school called Crestalban in Lanesborough, Massachusetts in the Berkshires.In the fall of 1921, Ruth Davis moved to New York City, using her children's tuition money to enroll in the Clarence White School of Photography, with an apartment on 144th Street at Broadway, then she worked as a portrait photographer.Davis later changed the spelling of her first name to Bette after "Bette Fischer", a character in Honoré de Balzac's "La Cousine Bette".