Artiste Doris Banks was born in Live Oak, Florida, and educated in Middletown, Connecticut.
She received teacher training at Willimantic Normal School, and pursued graduate education at Columbia University, where she earned a master's degree and completed her doctorate.
[6] Banks Henries wrote a biography of Liberian president William V. S. Tubman, published in 1967.
[8] In 1942, Doris Banks married Richard Abrom Henries, a Liberian government official whose first wife was Angie Brooks.
[13] Her husband, Speaker of the Liberian House of Representatives, was executed by firing squad in 1980, after a military coup.