Ally Lou attended Bryn Mawr College and Bucknell University before going on to Vanderbilt School of Medicine where she was the only woman in her class. Ally Lou completed a residency in anesthesiology at the University of California, San Francisco. She practiced in Hawaii, Washington, D.C. and Bangkok, Thailand. She worked for George Washington University from 1972 until retirement in 1988, after which she promptly volunteered for two tours with the International Red Cross at a surgical hospital for the UN's Khao-I-Dang Cambodian Refugee Camp in Thailand.