Zella de Milhau was born in 1866[3] in NoHo, New York in Manhattan, in the Colonnade Row buildings on Lafayette Street.

The New York Times wrote in 1997 that she convinced her neighbors to "add window boxes, plant trees, install greenery and take back the rear yards from laundry poles and hard-packed earth.

The New York Tribune reported in July 1920 that the "Society Girl Motor Cop" Milhau had taken the position of motorcycle policewoman, to chase speeding drivers.

De Milhau was the subject of the 1936 book Thank God for Laughter by Mel Erskine, the pen name of her partner, British author,[19] Mollie Lawton.

[21] In 1923 De Milhau submitted a colored mezzotint print to the Seventh Annual Exhibition of the Brooklyn Society of Etchers.

Her print "Boats Along Shore" would to cause sea lovers to "long for the tang of its air" according to Ernest G. Draper of The Brooklyn Museum Quarterly.