After being the literary editor of the New Orleans Daily Picayune, Rivers became the owner and publisher in 1876, after her elderly husband died.

Eliza Jane Poitevent was born in Gainesville, Hancock, Mississippi, USA, on March 11, 1843 (as confirmed by several documents, including the 1850 census and the birth records of her sons).

She is listed on the 1850 U.S. Census as living in Beat 2 of Hancock County, Mississippi, with an age of seven and younger siblings in the household.

She was sent to the Amite Female Seminary in Liberty, Mississippi, graduating in 1859, where she earned (or gave herself) the title of the "wildest girl in school".

During the American Civil War (1861–1865) she may have fallen in love with a soldier, since such a romance was described in a group of poems she wrote in 1866 for the New Orleans Times.

[1] A month after their marriage, Holbrook's first wife returned from New York and attacked her with a pistol and a bottle of rum.

[1] George Nicholson was a talented businessman who bought a 25% interest in the Daily Picayune and managed to pay down the debt and increase advertising revenue.

Rivers introduced many innovations to The Daily Picayune that greatly increased circulation, making the paper one of the leading journals in the South.

[4] Under Rivers, the paper fought corruption, gave strong opinions on public works on the Mississippi, supported railroad construction, advocated political changes and took other principled stands.

[10] A lover of animals, Rivers wrote editorials criticizing dog fighting and the beating of horses and mules.

[1] Rivers' early rhyming verse was mainly pastoral, with some poetry touching on love and heartbreak and, in retrospect, was not exceptional although it revealed a keen perception of nature.

Holcomb, a scholarly critic at the time wrote of her book Lyrics that "She stands by this volume ahead of any other Southern poet, and no female writer in America, from Mrs. Sigourney to the Carey [sic] sisters, has evidenced more poetic genius".

[7] An example of her early poetry, first published anonymously: Talking of her early life in the poem Myself, she introduced the "gossip-loving bee," who gave its name to the Society Bee column: Her later blank verse works "Hagar" and "Leah", published in Cosmopolitan in 1893 and 1894, have more depth, giving a powerful sense of the bitterness and jealousy of her heroines.