[9] As a child, Bowen was tutored by a white woman known to her mother, who taught her to read the McGuffey Readers before she began her formal training in the schools in Tuskegee.

[8] Upon completion of her education, Bowen became the principal at the Children's House, or training facility of Tuskegee Normal School.

E. N. Pierce of Plainfield, Connecticut, who had inherited the "Old Carter Place, wanted to found a smaller school on the model of Tuskegee for the community in Mt.

[12] Bowen created a community center, where she taught women and girls cooking, housekeeping and sewing, as well as instilling child-raising skills,[13] grooming, exercise and nutrition.

Sowing the seed, for cotton, corn and pumpkin; hoeing and plowing the weeds; and harvesting the crop, she netted a profit of $30.50 from her $50 sale.

[5] Besides teaching grammar and arithmetic, Bowen taught life-skills like farming, gardening, and raising bees, livestock and poultry.

[11] In addition, she would recuperate for part of each summer at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, and occasionally was accompanied by her sister Katie, who also taught at Mt.

[16][17][18] A devotee to "muscular Christianity", Bowen believed that good health was achieved by proper nourishment and exercise[19] and that participation in athletics also taught a respect for cooperation, rules, self-discipline, as well as the benefits of work.

[20] She participated in the "back to nature" movement, of intellectuals who ate a predominantly vegetarian diet, exercised and at least once spent time in a naturist community.

[26][27] Bowen attended many conferences throughout the United States speaking to women's groups and in 1905 published a short autobiography called A Woman's Work.

[30] Bowen also published many articles and poems, as well as participated in many educational programs aimed at improving the lives of young people.

[31] White women had successfully lobbied for the state to send boys to reform school instead of prison, but no similar provisions had been made for black youth.

[35] In 1920, Bowen gave the 400 acres remaining in the Mount Meigs Institute to the state of Alabama with the proviso that they would pay her for the holdings when they officially took over the school.