[4] She attended Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Texarkana, and then Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, where she received a bachelor's degree in biology and pre-med, graduating cum laude.

In 1943, following the death of her mother, she moved to Los Angeles, California, to live with Dr. Henry H. Towles (1888–1965), a prominent physician and real-estate investor, and his wife Ruth.

[7] Her assignment with Dior led to her spending the next five years in France, modeling for Jacques Fath, Elsa Schiaparelli, Pierre Balmain, and Robert Piguet.

[5] She later signed as a model with the Grace del Marco agency in New York City and worked as a fashion commentator for radio station WOV.

[9] Church recalled her experience in Paris of the early 1950s in a 2004 interview for Women's Wear Daily: "For once I was not considered black, African American or Negro.

[1] In her 1998 book Black and Beautiful,[10] author Barbara Summers quotes Church about her celebrity status in Paris at the beginning of the 1950s: "I got invited out all the time.

[9] The engagement was called off several months later when, a report in Jet magazine noted, "she would not agree to drop her modeling career after the wedding to stay home and do the things a wife should do".