[3] Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, Adams studied at the Art Students League of New York,[4] where her instructors included John Henry Twachtman and Frank Vincent DuMond.
[3] She is known to have exhibited work with artists from the Cos Cob colony in 1912 and 1913, but little else is known about her time in Old Lyme, Connecticut, save for an incident when her bedroom in the Griswold House was mistakenly entered one night by a misdirected male artist.
She traveled extensively in her youth, visiting many parts of Europe and Japan; in the 1930s she lived in Buenos Aires.
[4] As a painter, Adams favored landscape subjects, which she tended to depict in a more abstract fashion described as reminiscent of her teacher Twachtman.
[3] Her 1934 oil on canvas Man and Beast is currently in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.