[2] She was raised in London, where she learned art and drawing as part of her education, during which she was inspired by Curtis's The Botanical Magazine and the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society at Chiswick.

She began to draw plants and flowers, and practiced by making sketches from works in the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Elizabeth Twining wrote and illustrated a number of books on the subject of botany, most notably the two-volume Illustrations of the Natural Order of Plants (volume I published in 1849: volume II in 1855), which included 160 hand-coloured lithographs in royal-folio size, which were reportedly based on observations made at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, and at Lexden Park in Colchester.

She organised the illustrations of plant orders based on the de Candolle system, that was a new innovation at the time.

She established and managed a temperance hall in Portugal Street in Holborn, London; renovated the parish almshouses near her home at Twickenham (a fact commemorated by a plaque on St Mary's Church, Twickenham); and, after a long association with King's College Hospital, established the St John's Hospital for the treatment of the poor.