The women first met at Plymouth Church, Des Moines, Iowa at 5th and Grand Avenue, to form the club with twenty-two charter members.

Other prominent founders were Mrs. Maria S. Orwig and Mrs. Julia Hunting, active members in the American Association for the Advancement of Women.

In an article in the Des Moines Tribune "While a public art gallery has been the dream of each president...All the financial burdens of building and furnishing have been theirs (the club).

Women's Club Programs have brought many well known speakers to a Des Moines audience including Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Thompson, Amy Vanderbilt, Elsa Maxwell, Count Ilya Tolstoy, John Philip Sousa and his band, Will Rogers, Richard Halliburton, and John Erskine.

The document "City Beautiful Movement and City Planning in Des Moines Iowa 1892–1938"[5] written for the National Register of Historic Places application, cites the Des Moines Women's Club as being very influential in the development of the riverfront, the public library and the Civic Center District.

Their commitment dates from at least 1898 when the library site was selected and probably went back to early Park Board work beginning in 1892...

Page 37 states: Women remained involved and continued to play a role in fostering river front.

[5]The document concludes; Collectively, examples of this property type call attention to the role of various individuals and public and private groups in bringing about change during the progressive period.

At that time the club completely refurnished the house which had been emptied and used for two years by the Sisters of Mercy as a 52 bed hospital.

In 2019 a new capital campaign added a major addition to the theater wing and in 2020 a renovation of the original house began to restore it as a museum.

[12] The art collection of paintings and sculpture grew with purchases using Club funds as well as gifts from members and the community.

The Club gallery now is home to a large collection of nineteenth and twentieth century paintings and classical sculpture.

One valuable painting, "To the Memory of Cole" by Frederic Edwin Church was "discovered" hanging in the club gallery in the 1980s.

The first scholarship was awarded on November 18, 1903, to Mr. Roy Stancliff, a student at the Cumming School of Art in Des Moines.