[1] Her mother was an historian[2] and her father, Frederick William Eardley (1874–1958), was an accountant who served as registrar at the University of Adelaide.
[3] She completed her secondary education at Walford Anglican School for Girls, receiving honours in the leaving certificate.
[7][8] Her honours thesis was titled "The Occurrence of Mycorrhiza [root fungus] in the Plants of South Australia" and was supervised by Joseph Garnett Wood.
[4] Eardley worked at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute (now part of the University of Adelaide) as curator in the herbarium from 1933 to 1949.
[11][12] She was a keep conservationist and wrote a pocket book of South Australian flora, all copies of which were destroyed in floods in Brisbane, with the aim of raising money for conservation work.