Her father, William de Bray, was a British diplomat, who was at one point an attaché to the court of the mother of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

[3] Bray obtained a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Art from 1927 to 1931, where her tutor was Henry Tonks.

For over forty years Bray worked with the muralist Hans Feibusch painting in churches across Britain.

[7][8] Bray also worked on a number of solo projects, such as the three murals, on Music, Drama and Ballet, she produced for the People's Palace on the Mile End Road in east London.

These works were thought to have been destroyed but large sections of them were rediscovered, under layers of later painting, when the building was acquired by Queen Mary University of London and are now on display again.