Born in Conshohocken, near Philadelphia, USA, the artist studied at Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts. In Paris, she took a studio and was elected Societaire of the Salon d'Automne. She had a solo show at the Baillie Gallery, London (1910), and exhibited there regularly thereafter. In 1911 her work was part of a show by the Women's International Art Club at the Grafton Galleries, causing Huntley Carter to remark in the pages of The New Age: "The fierceness of this canvas haunts one. It is impossible to forget it" (Vol. 8, p. 474).

In 1911-13 she was associated with the production of John Middleton Murray and Michael Sadler's magazine Rhythm, of which John Duncan Fergusson was the art editor. She was associated with Fergusson himself from 1904-1914, and he painted a portrait of her. She married Oscar Raymond Drey, the art and theatre critic and brother to St Ives artist Agnes E DREY, and was friendly with Murray's wife, Katherine Mansfield. Her portrait of Mansfield, which was painted in Looe, Cornwall, is in the collection of The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Rice and Mansfield stayed together in St Ives in 1918.