Freyre de Andrade was born on 27 January 1896 in St. Augustine, Florida, where her father, Fernando Freyre de Andrade, had sought refuge for his family. Her family later returned to Cuba to fight in the revolution, where Fernando rose to the rank of general. Freyre de Andrade was forced to move to Paris in 1932 after the Machado regime killed three of her uncles. She studied French and library science at the Sorbonne between 1936 and 1937 and graduated in 1938 with a diploma in librarianship from the Ecole de Chartes. She returned to Cuba in 1938, where she lived most of the rest of her life until her death in Havana at age 79, in August 1975. She is buried in the Colón Cemetery in Havana.