Around 1882, Kate Brousseau started her teaching career giving private French lessons at her family home, the Brousseau Mansion, built around 1878 by her father, at 238 South Bunker Hill Avenue, Los Angeles. The house appears in the movie
The Money Trap (MGM, 1966) and also briefly in
Bus Stop (1956) (across the street from Marilyn Monroe's boarding house) and it was demolished shortly after
The Money Trap was filmed there. In 1891, Brosseau taught French at the Los Angeles State Normal School and also translated French literature for the
Los Angeles Times. From 1897 to 1903 Brousseau was on the faculty at the Los Angeles State Normal School teaching mathematics and psychology. From 1907 to 1928 she was professor of psychology and in the end chair of the Psychology Department at
Mills College, Oakland. Brousseau served in the
French Army in World War I from 1917 to 1919, as "directrice des Foyers du Soldat" (director of a soldiers' home), stationed on Lorraine Front; she was with the French Army of Occupation in Germany and in devastated districts of Northern France. Brousseau was treasurer and director of the Southern California Society of Mental Hygiene. Brousseau was a member of
American Association for the Advancement of Science,
American Association of University Professors,
American Association of University Women,
Women's Overseas Service League, Lique d'Hygiene Mental of Paris,
American Psychological Association, Southern California Academy of Criminology, Ecole d'Antropologie-Paris. ==Personal life==