Elizabeth Louise Allen, known as Betty Lou Allen, had been a guiding force at The Harlem School of the Arts since she became Executive Director. She was born on March 17, 1927, in Campbell, Ohio, near Youngstown. Her father worked in the steel mills; her mother had a thriving business taking in laundry. Betty grew up in a neighborhood which was mostly made up of Sicilian and Greek families, and where she was introduced to the opera and its music. From the neighbors' windows, she could hear the broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera house every Saturday on their radios. Betty lost her mother to lung cancer when she was 12 years old. After many turbulent years, which began with her father, and later in foster homes, where she was treated badly and unfairly, Betty moved into the Youngstown Y.W.C.A. when she was 16 years old. She supported herself cleaning houses, excelled in Latin and German languages in high school, and entered Wilberforce College in Wilberforce, Ohio, on a scholarship. At Wilberforce, Ms. Allen met Theodor Heimann, a former Berlin Opera tenor who taught German and voice there and encouraged her to sing. Soprano Leontyne Price was also a classmate at Wilberforce. Betty went on to earn a scholarship to what was then the Hartford School of Music in Connecticut. In the early 1950s, Ms. Allen studied at Tanglewood, where she met Leonard Bernstein. She became a frequent soloist with Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Betty made her New York recital debut at Town Hall in 1958 and became part of the first great wave of African American singers to appear on the world's premier stages in the postwar years. From the 1950s to the 1970s, she performed with the New York City Opera; the Metropolitan Opera and the opera companies of Houston, Boston, San Francisco, and Santa Fe. In 1954 Ms. Allen made her City Opera debut as Queenie in Showboat and in 1964, she made her formal opera debut at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Argentina, followed by countless appearances worldwide. Ms. Allen also toured as a recitalist, and at the time of her death, she was on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music, where she had taught since 1969. She was also the president emeritus and a former executive director of the Harlem School of the Arts. From 1979 to 1992 she served as Executive Director and President to the Harlem School of the Arts. Upon her retirement she stayed on as President Emeritus. In addition to her many years as a leader and master teacher with HSA, Ms. Allen has also taught at the North Carolina School of Arts, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Curtis institute of Music in Philadelphia. She received Honorary Doctorates from Wittenberg University, Union College, Adelphi University, and Clark University in Massachusetts and the New School in New York City.

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