She was the daughter of Tsuda Sen, an agricultural scientist, and at the age of 7, she became Japan's first female exchange student, traveling to the U.S. on the same ship as the Iwakura Mission.

In 1871, Tsuda Sen was involved in the Hokkaido colonization project under Kuroda Kiyotaka, and raised the topic of western education for women as well as for men.

Under Kuroda's sponsorship, Tsuda Ume was volunteered by her father as one of five women members of the Iwakura mission.

Tsuda lived in Washington, D.C. from December 1871 with Charles Lanman (the secretary of Japanese legation), and his wife Adeline.

Under the name of Ume Tsuda, she attended the middle-class Georgetown Collegiate School, where she learned English.

By the time Tsuda returned to Japan in 1882, she had almost forgotten Japanese, her native language, which caused temporary difficulties.

Even her father, Tsuda Sen, who was radically westernized in many ways, was still traditionally patriarchal and authoritarian with regards to women.

Tsuda returned to the United States and attended Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia from 1889 to 1892, where she majored in biology and education.

In 1900, with the help of her friends Princess Ōyama Sutematsu and Alice Bacon, she founded the Joshi Eigaku Juku (女子英学塾, Women's Institute for English Studies) located in Kōjimachi, Tokyo to provide equal opportunity for a liberal arts education for all women regardless of parentage.