Anderson was born in Paris, the daughter of Charles Antoine Colomb Gengembre, a French architect and artist, and his English wife, Marianne Farey (1799–1883), a daughter of
John Farey Sr. (1766–1826) and his wife Sophia Hubert (1770–1830). They married at St Pancras Church, London, on 12 April 1818. Her father was born in 1790 and began working as an architect at age 19. He worked primarily in municipal commissions, like the Mint of the City of Cassel, which he designed and built when he was 19. He was injured during the
Revolution of 1830 on the same day that his son Philip was born. The family then went to London, where Gengembre worked as an architect for
Charles Fourier. He returned to France and continued his work as an architect, designing communal schools around France. The family moved to the United States and adopted the surname
Hubert, because of difficulties in people pronouncing their French surname. After moving to
Cincinnati, Ohio, he settled in
Manchester, Pennsylvania. By 1863, he had designed the Allegheny City Hall "
pro bono". He stopped speaking English in protest after he was offered a share of the graft of over-inflated construction costs. The Gengembre family lived in Paris during the early years of Sophie's life, where her father was acquainted with artists, intellectuals and actors, including
François Joseph Talma. Circumstances required that the family leave Paris and live in a "remote area in France" from 1829 to 1843. At age 17, she developed an interest in art when a travelling portrait painter visited her town. She had two brothers, Philip and Henry. Her brother Philip changed his name to
Philip Hubert, using his grandmother's maiden name, and was a successful architect in New York City. She was largely self-taught in art, but briefly studied portrait painting with
Charles de Steuben in about 1843, when she lived with family friends in Paris. Soon after she began her studies, he left for Russia and did not return within the one year allotted for her studies. She did develop relationships with other women artists at the school where she gained a little more instruction. ==United States==