In 1902 Lynch traveled to Paris, where her instructors at the Académie Julian included William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Gabrielle Debillemont-Chardon.
She showed work in the Paris Salons of 1903 and 1904 before returning to Chicago in 1905, a year before her miniatures were the subject of a solo exhibition at the Art Institute.
She began exhibiting widely elsewhere, receiving a bronze medal at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915.
She was especially noted for miniatures of children, but as the medium lost popularity she began to create more full-sized portraits, as well as still-life images.
Later in her career she produced landscapes and marine paintings, many based on trips she had taken abroad to France and Spain.