She lived intermittently in Rome, in an expatriate colony of prominent artists and sculptors, some of whom became part of her tempestuous private life.

She was a descendant in the eighth generation from Pilgrim Robert Cushman, who helped organize the Mayflower voyage and brought the family name to the United States on the Fortune in 1621.

Two friends of her father, one of them John Mackay, in whose piano factory Jonas Chickering was then foreman, provided her with musical instruction.

Through Mrs. Wood's influence she became a pupil of James G. Maeder, a ladies' musical director, and under his instruction made her first appearance in opera in the Tremont Theatre as the Countess Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro, with great success, and her second as Lucy Bertram in Guy Mannering.

Seeking the counsel of James H. Caldwell, manager of the principal theatre of New Orleans, she was advised by him and by Barton, the tragedian, to become an actress and was given the part of Lady Macbeth to study.

[3] Cushman made her initial professional appearance at age eighteen on April 8, 1835, at Boston's Tremont Theatre.

[4] She then went to New Orleans where she performed successfully for one season, after which she returned to New York City to act under contract with the Bowery Theatre.

[5] By 1839, her younger sister Susan Webb Cushman became an actress, and at the age of 14 had married Nelson Merriman.

They began living in an American expatriate community there, made up mostly of the many lesbian artists and sculptors of the time.

In 1854, Hays left Cushman for sculptor Harriet Hosmer, which launched a series of jealous interactions among the three women.

[9] Before her departure to Italy, Cushman offered a farewell performance at the Washington Theater in the title role of Hamlet.

The poster advertising her appearance describes her as "a lady universally acknowledged as the greatest living tragic actress".

In 1871, after a residence in Europe, she resumed her career in the United States as a reader, besides fulfilling several dramatic engagements.

She took a similar demonstrative farewell in the same character in Philadelphia and other cities and her career closed in Boston, at the Globe Theatre, on 15 May 1875.

After a reading tour to Rochester, Buffalo, and Syracuse, she retired with a large fortune to her villa at Newport, where she was seized with her final illness.

[13] She made England her home for several years, becoming friends with the author Geraldine Jewsbury, who is said to have based a character on Cushman in her 1848 novel The Half Sisters.