Carma Rose de Jong Anderson was born in 1930. She was raised by her widower father, Gerrit de Jong Jr., dean of fine arts. She taught English for the US State Department in Brazil at age seventeen, then graduated from Brigham Young University High School in Provo. Constantly studying arts, history, four languages, and national literatures, she still consults with artists and sculptors in cultural history.

Sister Anderson taught a Salzburg Semester Abroad. She received her BA in 1976 in art with modern languages and her PhD in 1992 in theater media arts: historic clothing, with art history. She married Richard L. Anderson in 1951; they have four children. Sister Anderson has awards in watercolor, etching, mosaic, poetry, and writing history, and received the Reese award for her 1994 dissertation. She was chosen from five hundred entries of anything to do with Mormonism, both theses and dissertations. She taught historic clothing for nine years at BYU and Education Week for twenty-five years, touring fashion shows through USA to Canada. Sister Anderson donated five thousand pieces of historic clothing to the BYU Fine Arts Collection.