[7][8] Her future husband, William A. Chanler, first saw her in a 1902 production of A Country Girl[9] starring C. Hayden Coffin at Augustin Daly's theater in London.

[13][14][15] Ashley was anxious to quit her stage career due to damage to her eyesight resulting from prolonged exposure to theatrical arc lights.

[5] In 1911, after a decade's absence from the stage, Ashley returned briefly to acting, revisiting her role as Madame Sophie in "A Country Girl.

[22] When Beatrice objected, reminding him that he had a family to support and could not risk his life so easily, Willie revised his will, signing over the better part of his estate to his wife and sons in trust.

[31] In 1917, she volunteered to spend five months in France and told the New York Times in June: As to the devastated regions that I visited, the awful waste and desolation is almost inconceivable.

I visited the ransacked regions of Pozières and Bapaume, where there was nothing but charred trees to make a village site, and a level country made undulating by shellfire.

[32][33]Later that year she co-founded and managed the French Heroes Lafayette Memorial Fund[34][35] headquartered at the Château de Chavaniac in Auvergne.

[25][36][31] The château served as a school, orphanage and preventorium for the care of pre-tubercular, frail and malnourished children, as well as a museum of the life and family of the Marquis de Lafayette.

[38] She also extensively researched (on location in Paris and Algiers) a 1934 biography of Cleopatra's daughter citing English, French, German, Latin and Greek references.

[42][25] Her funeral was delayed to give time for her Order of the Phoenix decoration to be flown from Athens and placed on her casket, along with her Legion of Honor cross.