She served as the Massachusetts Vice-regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association and held administrative positions at Radcliffe College throughout her life.

She donated significantly to multiple causes dealing with historic preservation, education, and humanitarianism including the Audubon Society, the Tuskegee Institute, and the American Fund for French Wounded during World War I. Alice Longfellow was born on September 22, 1850, at "half past six" in the morning, "with the setting of the moon and the rising of the sun!

[citation needed] Her mother Fanny wrote of the baby Alice: "It is a great laughter and has a very expressive little face already, with dark blue eyes and an inclination to look like Henry, I think.

Her mother records of young Alice that, "She likes to take up a book & read stories & says more cunning things than can be remembered"[7] and that "she is an impetuous little woman full of character & originality.

"[10] After the death of her mother in 1861, Longfellow took on something of a caretaker role to her two younger sisters, which arguably solidified her "graveness" as described in her father's 1859 poem.

[citation needed] One of her best friends growing up was Harriet "Hattie" Spelman[11] who would later go on to marry Longfellow's brother, Ernest.

[22] When Harvard officially acquired the organization in 1893, President Charles William Eliot considered naming it Longfellow College after the poet but his daughter, who sat on the founding committee, refused and suggested they should find another namesake who had been more committed to the education of women.

[23] She continued her legacy by donating money for Longfellow Hall, built in 1930, and currently used for the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Her crowning achievement was when, in 1904, she bought Washington's secretary bookcase with her own money to put in its rightful place in his study, the room which she had a particular interest in preserving.

[citation needed] In 1884 Alice and her sister Anne Longfellow saw the dedication of their father's bust in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey in London.

[44] In 1900 Longfellow was invited to visit the Ojibwe people in Ontario, Canada in recognition of her father's favorable representation of the tribe in The Song of Hiawatha (1855).

[45][46] She and her two sisters traveled to Kensington Point, Desbarats, Ontario and attended a pageant based on the book performed by members of the Garden River First Nation.

[47] Alice Longfellow was the last of the poet's children to remain in the family home; she did little to alter it, with the exception of modernizing bathrooms and installing an elevator.

[49] The purpose of the Trust was to preserve the home of their father for its historical significance so that it could remain for future generations as a monument to his life and work.

[citation needed] Perhaps Longfellow's most notable personal excursion is when she met with Benito Mussolini on October 24, 1927, at Palazzo Chigi and presented him with a copy of her father's translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.

[53] Longfellow was sympathetic to the Fascist cause, writing a paper circa 1923 entitled "The Fascisti As I Saw Them" in which she praises Mussolini's work as leader of Italy.

She visited Canada,[46] Portugal,[55] Spain,[55] Italy,[56][57] Switzerland,[56] Germany,[56] Austria,[56] England,[1][56] Wales,[58] Scotland,[56] France,[56][59] and Belgium.

[61] It is rumored, although in no way substantiated, that it was Edison himself who convinced Longfellow to introduce electricity into her historic Cambridge home in the early 20th century.

In 1876 when she was about 25 years old she went to the Centennial International Exposition with her father and two sisters in Philadelphia for the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

[70] She spent a great deal of time with a close female friend, Fanny Stone, daughter of a Republican politician from Massachusetts.

Stone's letters reveal a strong romantic attachment to Alice and their relationship was one of the most important and significant of Longfellow's life.