Jeanne Smith grew up in a Parisian upper-class household as well as at the family’s country estate in Nogent-sur-Marne. Her younger sister was the painter Madeleine Smith. From 1883, Jeanne devoted herself to amateur photography. She met Ottilie W. Roederstein in Paris in 1885, a close and lasting friendship ensued that also included Jeanne’s sister Madeleine. Several times, Jeanne Smith and Roderstein travelled together, for instance to Switzerland, England and later also to North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. These travels Jeanne documented in several photo albums. After her mother’s death, she settled at the family estate in Nogent-sur-Marne in 1912, where the sisters set up a military hospital during the First World War. They decided to bequeath the estate and their fortune to the French state. The foundation they established in their will and testament in the support of living artists (Fondation Smith-Champion, now dissolved into the Fondation des Artistes) came into effect one year after Jeanne Smith’s death.