Valentine Gross grew up in an enlightened and open-minded family with a professional painter for a father. After earning a certificate to teach drawing, she was admitted to the École des beaux-arts in Paris in 1907, and spent time in Jacques Fernand Humbert’s workshop. Her first participation in the Salon des artistes français took place in 1909. Her passion for music and dance led her to complete a number of dancer studies and exhibited her pastel sketches and wax paintings on wood at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1913. For the fashion illustrations she published in Lucien Vogel’s La Gazette du bon ton, she favoured wood engraving techniques. In 1916, she exhibited a few illuminated manuscripts at the Barbazanges gallery in Paris. She also designed costumes for Jacques Copeau and the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier workshop in 1917. In 1919, she married Jean Hugo, Victor Hugo’s great-great-grandchild. From then on, she alternated between creating disguises and “puppet-masks” for the Noailles and Beaumont costume balls and designing costumes and sets with her husband for theatre productions (Romeo and Juliet, 1924).