She was the fourth daughter of Dr. and Mrs. J. Monroe Rallings, a country medical practitioner and a college speech teacher, respectively.
Lewis graduated from Pageland High School in 1936 and continued her education at Winthrop College in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
She completed basic training at Fort Lee in Virginia and became the assistant director of the Cadet Nurse Corps at the Valley Forge General Hospital in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.
In 1953, Lewis joined the faculty of the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, remaining a professor there until 1966.
Lewis was active with hospice care in the Greensboro area, and received awards for her contributions to the nursing field, including four honorary degrees.