Florence Ada Cross was born in South West Hoosick, New York, the daughter of Emma Gifford Cross and Ebenezer Cross. She graduated from Hoosick Falls High School in1902, and studied piano in Paris and traveled in Europe from 1907 to 1908. She married Arthur Clennam Boughton in Nagasaki, Japan in 1913, and lived in Shanghai, China from 1913-15. The Boughtons had one child, Elizabeth Cross Boughton Noll, born in 1921. Florence Boughton was an accomplished concert pianist and performed extensively throughout her life.