She was the descendant of confederados, southern plantation owners that had come to Brazil after the American Civil War.

Her father was James Franklin Houston, an American dentist from Tennessee who settled in Rio de Janeiro in 1892, and Arinda Galdo, a Brazilian descendant of Portuguese from Madeira Island.

In addition to Mário de Andrade and Pagu, Houston knew others famous members of this artists movement, including the composer Heitor Villa-Lobos, the painters Flavio de Carvalho, Anita Malfatti and Tarsila do Amaral, and the leader of Brazilian modernism, Oswald de Andrade.

Houston moved to Germany and studied with Lilli Lehmann a renowned voice teacher.

In 1928 she married Benjamin Péret, French surrealist poet, with whom she lived in Brazil from 1929 to 1931.