Her mother was born in India; her maternal grandfather was Presbyterian missionary Henry Martyn Scudder.

She spent part of her childhood in Japan,[1] when her father, an American Civil War veteran, was working as a teacher in Kumamoto.

[4] Dejeans wrote novels and short stories, mostly "popular female romances" focused on the New Woman and her modern problems.

[5] "Dejeans writes neither trash nor sensationalism," explained a 1912 reviewer, "but she does draw powerful pictures of the things that are not always pleasant to look upon.

In 1894, Elizabeth Janes married English physician and medical school professor Sidney Paine Budgett.