Lita Cabellut grew up as a street child in Barcelona where her mother ran a brothel. She was raised by her grandmother until she passed away and Cabellut was sent to an orphanage. After being adopted by a Catalan family at the age of 12, she became exposed to the art world and was particularly drawn to the works of artists such as Goya, Velasquez and Frans Hals. At the age of 19, she moved to the Netherlands to pursue her studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam where she studied until 1984, learning, adopting and developing certain techniques that would later define her oeuvre.