She was born to Beverly LaFayette Holcombe and Eugenia Dorothea Hunt Holcombe at the family plantation near La Grange, Tennessee. She attended La Grange Female Academy before switching to a finishing school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania with older sister Anna Eliza, from 1846–1848. In 1848, the Holcombes moved to Marshall, Texas and lived in the Capitol Hotel while waiting for the construction of their plantation Wyalucing.