She was born Adelina Juana Maria Patti, in Madrid, the last child of tenor Salvatore Patti (1800–1869) and soprano Caterina Barilli (died 1870). Her Italian parents were working in Madrid, Spain, at the time of her birth. Because her father came from Sicily, Patti was born a subject of the King of the Two Sicilies, but had a French passport for most of her life, as two of her three husbands were French. She settled in South Wales in 1903, and after her last concert, for the Red Cross, in 1914 she died there, of natural causes.