She was a member of the Dutch aristocratic Van Dedem family, who were prominent in the industrial development of the Netherlands.
[1] In 1871, she married William Edward Hartpole Lecky, an Irish historian, essayist, political theorist, and provost of Trinity College Dublin.
[4] Lecky was a prolific writer, contributing travel writing, political essays and editorial commentary to English periodicals including the British Medical Journal,[5] The Nineteenth Century,[6] and Living Age.
She joined prominent suffragists in petitioning for the extension of Parliamentary suffrage alongside Millicent Fawcett and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson in 1897.
[10] Following her husband William Lecky's death she wrote his biography, A Memoir of the Right Honourable William Edward Hartpole Lecky, Member of the French Institute and of the British Academy (1909),[11] and edited a posthumous collection of his essays, Historical and Political Essays (1908).