[2] She was graduated from Girls' High School in San Francisco in 1915 and then attended the College of Hawaii from 1915 to 1917.
[9] While in Spain, Bennett had a brief love affair with Wallace Burton, an ex-pat fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
[2] She spent much of her career producing propaganda for the English language newspapers of communist governments in the USSR and China.
[14] In 1935 and 1936, she was a reporter for the Newspaper Enterprise Association, The New York Times, and the International News Service.
[12][15] She was also a staff member for the English-language section of the Press and Propaganda Service of the Spanish Government, working alongside her friend Kate Mangan.
[16] Taking the job in Spain allowed her to reclaim her ideals, instead of working for the "capitalist press," and to let her cover a war, which interested her personally.
[14] In her memoir, On Her Own, Bennett describes living in the Soviet Union just before World War II broke out, living through the Spanish Civil War, life in China during the Northern Expedition, and her various other posts as a reporter.
[6] Though she was instructed to wait until she had returned to the United States to apply again, she sent another application in October of that year while still in Spain.