Ruth Benedict was born on June 5, 1887 in New York City. A year and a half later her sister, Margery, was born. When Ruth was nearly two years old her father passed away from a severe fever. As a result, she developed a keen awareness of the facts of life and death. While he was sick, Ruth and her family were forced to move into her maternal grandparent's house. They remained there for seven years while her mother took care of Ruth and her sister. They then moved around the country so Ruth's mother could work as a teacher.

When Ruth and Margery were in their last year of high school, they won scholarships to attend Vassar College. Their mother had graduated from Vassar College years before. While at Vassar from 1905 - 1909, Ruth won prizes for essays she had written, which gave her a chance to see "worth in her purposes." She took a year off to travel overseas and upon returning home she was unsure of what she wanted to do with her life. She married Stanley Benedict, a Biochemistry Professor at Cornell Medical School. They married in 1914 and were married until his death in 1936.

Ruth went back to school in the fall of 1919 and began to focus more on anthropology. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University in 1922. While there, Ruth became friends with Elsie Clews Parsons and together they became anthropologists. She studied under the famous Franz Boas and eventually became his assistant and taught Margaret Mead. Ruth and Margaret became good friends and developed a mutual dependence on one another.

Ruth taught at Columbia University from 1923-1948. Speaking in front of people was an agony for her. Her shyness along with her partial deafness created many difficulties for Ruth. Her students reacted differently to her deafness, but it didn’t seem to have any effect on her discussions or her abilities. All of her students were important to her and even after a brief discussion, Ruth Benedict could remember all the details from the conversation. She made every student important. Ruth Benedict was very talented in summarizing and effectively arranging facts which were characteristic of her writings and ultimately her approach to anthropology; this, perhaps, may be the reason many of her reviews were published in professional papers and magazines throughout her career. Ruth concentrated most of her efforts on researching and studying different cultures on which many of her writings were based. She wrote of the differences between the cultures around the world and talked about different patterns related to culture and behavior. She did not publish often, nor did she publish a lot, but what she did publish was considered to be very important work.

Ruth Benedict was a very important figure in early anthropology and even more-so in cultural anthropology. She was one of the first female anthropologists of her time. Her books serve as reference points of humanistic thought in the 20th century. She helped to shape the discipline of anthropology not only in the United States, but also for the rest of the world. Ruth died in New York City on September 17, 1948. She had been back from Europe for five days after concluding a summer of traveling and teaching when she became ill. She died five days later. Her friends Margaret Mead and Dorothy Lee each wrote obituaries about Ruth that give many details of her life and they expressed how her death created a void in both the field of anthropology and folklore that could not be filled.

Some of her publications include:

Patterns of Culture. Houghton (1934)

Zuni Mythology (1935)

Race, Science, and Politics(1940)

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946)