Elinor Bellingham-Smith studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1928. In 1931 she finished her studies at the Slade and married the English painter Rodrigo Moynihan.

M H Middleton reviewed the Leicester Galleries exhibition of Bellingham-Smith's paintings in November 1952: "Miss Bellingham-Smith's wistful, gentle paintings, on the other hand, delicately touched in with sad grey-greens, tug at the heart like memories of childhood. Her little girls have a lyrical elegance, as though Susanne Eisendieck had been crossed with Kate Greenaway. Her unpeopled landscapes evoke the enjoyable melancholy of the return from the Sunday afternoon walk with the dog, when there was rain in the sky and the wind lifted the birds...