Reed was born in Springfield, Illinois, on February 22, the daughter of commercial artist Walter Reed. In 1927, the family moved to Los Angeles, where her father worked for Mission Engraving and Walt Disney.

In L.A., Reed studied at the Chouinard Art School, and the Art Center School, but she attributed her success to her study with landscape artist Jack Wilkinson Smith.

She enjoyed the outdoors, visiting ranches and making pack trips into the Tetons, which led to her painting being devoted to western life and horses. On one of her trips in the California countryside seeking inspiration, she met Captain William Banning who had driven stage coaches for his father, Phineas Banning. The life on the stage lines captured her imagination and for over forty years, she focused her work on the Butterfield Overland Stage Line and its men, first with a series of works on its route through California, and later expanding her work to include paintings on its eastward route to Tipton, Missouri.

Los Angeles remained her home until the mid 1940's when she moved to Tombstone, Arizona, where she owned and operated the Adobe Gallery. Her final home was in Anza-Borrego; she died while raking leaves at Campbell Ranch in Vallecito, a master station on the Butterfield route.