Her grandfather, John S. Butler, was a psychiatrist and founder of the Institute of Living, one of the country's first mental health centers.

Friends of the family included Samuel Clemens, Harriet Beecher Stowe and William Gillette.

[6] After her father, an insurance executive, passed away in 1890, Goodrich decided to enter the workforce.

Inspired by caretakers who had tended to her father and grandfather, Goodrich enrolled at the New York Hospital Training School for Nurses, where she experienced shockingly low standards of education as well as care for students.

In 1904, she became an assistant professor at Columbia University's Teachers College, where she taught a course on hospital economics.

In 1907 she became General Superintendent at Bellevue Hospital, and by 1917 serving as director for the Henry Street Settlement's Visiting Nurses Service while still teaching at Columbia.