[1][2] She was born in 1852 as the fifth child, and second daughter, of William Henry Vanderbilt (1821–1885) and Maria Louisa Kissam (1821–1896).

Her paternal grandparents were Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877) and his wife, Sophia Johnson (1795–1868).

[2] In 1885, she and her husband commissioned Peabody and Stearns to build Elm Court, the mammoth shingle-style 'cottage' in Lenox, Massachusetts.

[4] In 1872, the twenty year old Vanderbilt was married to William Douglas Sloane (1844–1915).

In 1920, after Sloane's death, she married Henry White (1850–1927), American Ambassador to France and Italy, and a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles.