A native of Portland, Oregon, Francis was educated at St. Helens Hall and later studied piano and operatic voice under Abbie Carrington in San Francisco.

After completing her studies, Francis found success as a Broadway actress, obtaining lead roles in original productions of the musicals The Pink Lady (1911) and The Little Cafe (1913).

Francis spent her later life married to Kenneth Fields, a U.S. forest ranger, and living on a berry farm west of Sandy, Oregon, where she taught singing in her private home studio, and was an advocate of the arts in the Portland metropolitan area.

[3] Both her maternal and paternal ancestors were Scottish pioneers, and her father was a mining engineer originally from Chicago who founded the St. Johns Lumber Company in Portland.

[3] Among them were the horror film The Wolf Man (1924), in which she starred opposite John Gilbert and Norma Shearer,[15] and Love Letters (also 1924), co-starring with Shirley Mason.

[16] After her role in Love Letters, Fox loaned Francis out to appear in a stage production of The Mission Play in Alhambra, California,[17] which she starred in for three years under directors John S. McGroarty[17] and Tyrone Power Sr.[3] Francis toured the opera circuit in Italy in the late-1920s through the early-1930s, appearing as the lead soprano in productions of La bohème, Faust, Madama Butterfly, and Pagliacci.