[4][5] Clementina was born in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, on 1 June 1822, the third of five children of Admiral Charles Elphinstone Fleeming (1774–1840), and Catalina Paulina Alessandro (1800–1880).

[7] In 1845, she married Cornwallis Maude, 4th Viscount Hawarden, who was an Irish Conservative politician, and they lived mainly in Ireland;[7] the couple had eight girls and two boys.

[8][7] She turned to photography in late 1856 or, probably, in early 1857, whilst living on the family estate in Dundrum, County Tipperary, Ireland.

[10] Lewis Carroll, an admirer of her work, brought two children to be photographed at this booth, and purchased the resulting prints.

[4] A collection of 775 portraits were donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in 1939 by Hawarden's granddaughter Clementina Tottenham.

She states "Hawarden's pictures raise significant issues of gender, motherhood, and sexuality as they relate to photography's inherent attachments to loss, duplication and replication, illusion, fetish.