Ben Carré was born in Paris, France in 1883. His father, a professional painter and decorator, died when Carré was six-years-old. At thirteen, Carré left school to become an apprentice house-painting estimator. Finding his talent lay in painting rather than arithmetic, he took a job as an assistant scene painter at Atelier Amable, at the time one of the most important scenic art studios in Paris. One of his first jobs was painting a large-scale reproduction of the Paris World's Fair for London's Earl Court Exhibition Hall. Within two years he was designing and painting backgrounds for the Opera, the Comédie-Française, and Covent Garden in London.