She had three older sisters, including Althea Rochon, who went overseas as a YMCA worker during World War I.

[6] (Etnah Rochon Boutte's first name is found as Etna or Edna in some sources, but she used the five-letter spelling in published advertisements for her school[7] and in correspondence.)

Boutte attended Fisk University, but left during her senior year in 1917 to do war work.

[23][24] During World War II she chaired the Manhattan chapter of the Free French Relief Committee.

[25] In 1922, Boutte was one of the sixteen women who founded the NAACP fundraising effort the Anti-Lynching Crusaders, in Newark, New Jersey, with Mary Burnett Talbert as director.

[33] From 1943 into the 1960s, she was appointed to several terms on the Board of Visitors at the Warwick State Training School for Boys.