Steed began a BA in banking and finance at New York University, but embraced the Greenwich Village artistic and political life, often singing blues in nightclubs, and dropped out to take a job as a writer with the Works Progress Administration.Rafael Soyer painted portrait of her at eighteen, "Girl in a White Blouse", (1932) which is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and she is the medusa-haired subject in Soyer's "Two Girls" 1933 (oil on canvas) at the Smart Museum.