Mayna Treanor Avent was born on September 17, 1868, in Nashville, Tennessee.

[1] She grew up at Tulip Grove, an antebellum mansion opposite Andrew Jackson's The Hermitage.

[1][2] She often painted in what is now known as the Mayna Treanor Avent Studio on the Jake's Creek Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Elkmont, Tennessee.

[1][2] In 1891, she married Frank Avent, a lawyer for the State Railroad Commissioner from Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Avent spent her last three years with her son in Sewanee, Tennessee.