Popenoe attended the Welsh Girls' School in Ashford until the beginning of World War I when she joined the Women's Land Army.

In July 1923, she accepted an invitation from Agnes Chase to join the staff of the United States National Herbarium in the Office of Foreign Plant Introduction.

[1] In 1925, her husband accepted a position with the United Fruit Company as the director of agricultural experiments and moved the family to Tela on the Atlantic Coast of Honduras.

However, she could not complete her work because, in December 1932, she ate an unripe, uncooked akee fruit, which is believed to have poisoned her, and as a result, she died.

[2][3] Archaeologist Doris Stone included her analysis of the materials Popenoe excavated in her 1941 work "Archaeology of the North Coast of Honduras."