[3] Her father was the grandson of a slave and her mother's parents were of black, Cherokee Indian, and Scottish-Irish origins.

[7] She trained at Morgan College and then applied to the Peabody Institute, but was rejected from the school due to her race.

[8] Brown then applied to the Juilliard School in New York at the encouragement of the wife of the owner of The Baltimore Sun.

She studied singing with Lucia Dunham and was awarded Juilliard's Margaret McGill scholarship when she was 20 years old.

'I want you to know, Miss Brown,' he said, 'that henceforth and forever after, George Gershwin's opera will be known as Porgy and Bess.

[4]Brown took part of opera history when she sang Bess for the world premiere of Porgy and Bess at the Colonial Theatre in Boston on September 30, 1935 – the try-out for a work intended initially for Broadway where the opening took place at the Alvin Theater in New York City on October 10, 1935.

Olin Downes in The New York Times praised Brown's performance as "a high point of interpretation.

"[7] Critical responses to the work were mixed; some reviewers were uncertain as to whether or not Porgy was a folk opera, musical comedy, jazz drama, or something completely different.

He thought that those were the old cliches of black people – dope peddlers, near-prostitutes; he especially didn't like his daughter showing her legs and all that.

I thought that DuBose Heyward and Gershwin had simply taken a part of life in Catfish Row, South Carolina, and rendered it superbly.

"[4] Following the show's run on Broadway, a United States tour started on January 27, 1936, in Philadelphia and traveled to Pittsburgh and Chicago before ending in Washington, D.C., on March 21, 1936.

'"[4] Eventually management gave in to the demands, resulting in the first integrated audience for a performance of any show at the National Theatre.

This was later followed by an appearance in the 1939 Broadway play Mamba's Daughters in the roles of Gardenia and the "Lonesome Walls" Singer.

"[4] She also stated that she felt her singing was better received in Europe because she mainly sang works by European composers, such as Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, and Mahler.

[7] In 1948, Brown settled in Oslo, Norway and became a Norwegian citizen after marrying skier Thorleif Schjelderup, a medalist at the 1948 Winter Olympics.

Her career as a singer was cut short due to problems with asthma; she no longer sang professionally after 1955.

On October 9, 1980, Brown was interviewed for an article written by James A. Standifier called, "Reminiscences of Black Musicians".

[7] Her papers and personal artifacts are housed in the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.