The youngest of the four Whitehouse sisters who lived for many years around St Ives, Halsetown and Lelant. All four were daughters of William F, a prosperous merchant and landowner, and his wife Sarah, who lived in Leamington Priors, Warwickshire, and were parents to seven children (four girls and three boys) in all.

Whybrow notes one brother, also a painter and architect, who set up the Hyde Park Fine Art Gallery in London and reproduced paintings by 'autotype method' (p 80). After their father died (1882), the girls and their mother moved around, some travelling abroad, and Sarah Elizabeth WHITEHOUSE and Mary Jane WHITEHOUSE lodging on the Isle of Wight (1891). Shortly thereafter they settled in West Cornwall. After her mother died (1900) Daisy, as did all her sisters by various amounts, reduced her age by 10 years, claiming in the 1901 Census that she was born in 1874.