Their parents owned or managed hotels in the American South, and the family regularly moved.

[3] As a model, Ford posed for photographers Cecil Beaton, Man Ray, and Carl Van Vechten, among others.

Before Ford's trip to Hollywood, she was a member of Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre, and appeared in his film Too Much Johnson (1938), which was considered lost until the rediscovery of footage in 2013.

[6] Ford, writing out Christmas cards by her courtyard window, was the first person to call 911 to report shots fired at The Dakota apartments after what turned out to be the murder of John Lennon.

She bequeathed the apartments to her cook/butler, Indra Tamang, a Nepalese-American whom Charles Henri Ford had brought to New York.