Rae Harris spent her first seven years in Geraldton and Cue before the family moved to Perth. She studied art and music from an early age, performing on stage from the age of eight. After her father's death in 1919, Harris worked as a commercial artist for the department stores Foy and Gibson and Boans. She accepted a job in Sydney with the Women's Mirror in the early 1930s and married Cliff Harris, a prominent Perth City Councillor, in 1936. Music and painting were extremely important to her throughout her life - she studied painting watercolour miniatures in London when she was in her 60s and was a member of the Royal Miniature Society of London. Her husband died in 1993 and in 1999 Harris moved to Melbourne to live with her daughter. She died soon after completing her as yet unpublished autobiography, Miracles Still Happen.