According to at least one account, Bogdan-Pitești was educated in Geneva, at a local Catholic institution. Raised in the Romanian Orthodox faith, he converted to Catholicism in his twenties, but was no longer a practicing Catholic by the time of his death. He supposedly attended medical school at the University of Montpellier, without ever graduating, and afterwards left to join the bohemian milieu of Paris. He may have enrolled at the University of Paris, studying Law and Letters, but probably withdrew after a short while. Art historian Sanda Miller recounts that Bogdan-Pitești attended the "École des Beaux-Arts" in the French capital, but that he was ultimately expelled. Other sources express doubt that the Romanian aristocrat was ever affiliated with any university or college, in either France or Switzerland.