[5][6][7] Richards was a pragmatic feminist, as well as a founding ecofeminist, who believed that women's work within the home was a vital aspect of the economy.

She was the only child of Peter Swallow (b. June 27, 1813, Dunstable; d. March 1871, Littleton, Massachusetts) and Fanny Gould Taylor (b. April 9, 1817, New Ipswich, New Hampshire), both of whom came from established families of modest means and were believers in the value of education.

Swallow's Latin proficiency allowed her to study French and German, a rare language north of New York.

The strongest personal influences during her college years were Maria Mitchell, the astronomer, and Professor Charles S. Farrar (1826-1908[13]), who was at the head of the Department of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

[11] On December 10, 1870, after some discussion and a vote, the Faculty of the Institute of Technology recommended to the MIT Corporation the admission of Swallow as a special student in chemistry.

[11] Richards served on the board of trustees of Vassar College for many years and was granted an honorary doctor of science degree in 1910.

On June 4, 1875, Swallow married Robert Hallowell Richards (1844–1945), chairman of the Mine Engineering Department at MIT, with whom she had worked in the mineralogy laboratory.

[17] From 1884 until her death, Swallow now Richards was an instructor at the newly founded laboratory of sanitary chemistry at the Lawrence Experiment Station, the first in the United States, headed by her former professor William R. Nichols.

These led to the so-called "Richards' Normal Chlorine Map" which was predictive of inland water pollution in the state of Massachusetts.

[20][7] Richards' master's thesis at Vassar was an analysis of the amount of vanadium in iron ore.[20] She performed numerous experiments in mineralogy, including the discovery of an insoluble residue of the rare mineral samarskite.

[24] In her book Euthenics: the science of controllable environment (1910),[25] she defined the term as the betterment of living conditions, through conscious endeavor, for the purpose of securing efficient human beings.

Vigorous debate about its exact meaning, confusion with the term eugenics, followed by the Great Depression and two world wars, were among the many factors which led to the movement never really getting the funding, nor the attention needed to put together a lasting, vastly multidisciplinary curriculum as defined by Richards.

Also, improvements in public sanitation (for example, the wider availability of sewage systems and of food inspection) led to a decline in infectious diseases and thus a decreasing need for the largely household-based measures taught by home economists.

[11] She also served as a consultant to the Manufacturers Mutual Fire Insurance Company and in 1900 wrote the textbook Air, Water, and Food from a Sanitary Standpoint, with A. G. Woodman.

"Perhaps the fact that I am not a radical and that I do not scorn womanly duties but claim it as a privilege to clean up and sort of supervise the room and sew things is winning me stronger allies than anything else," she wrote to her parents.

She published The Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning: A Manual for House-keepers in 1881, designed and demonstrated model kitchens, devised curricula, and organized conferences.

[28] Mrs. Richards appeared before the Woman's Education Association of Boston on November 11, 1875, and in an address, which made a deep impression, set forth the needs of women.

She expressed the belief that the governing board of the Institute of Technology would provide space for a woman's laboratory if the Association would supply the necessary money for instruments, apparatus, and books.

Mrs. Richards became an unpaid assistant instructor in 1879 in chemical analysis, industrial chemistry, mineralogy, and applied biology under Professor John M. Ordway.

[11] In January 1876, Mrs. Richards began a long association with the first American correspondence school, the Society to Encourage Studies at Home, as an instructor, and developed its science department.

This was at a time when household conveniences employing water, gas, or electricity were becoming more common, but housekeepers seldom understood the dangers or difficulties inherent in using these new appliances.

Scientists in the Boston area offered their teaching services for the school, allowing teachers to easily take such courses.

[32] On January 1, 1890, Richards collaborated with Mary Hinman Abel (1850–1938) to found the New England Kitchen of Boston, at 142 Pleasant Street.

[S]tarting the New England Kitchen ... was ... an experiment to determine the successful conditions of preparing, by scientific methods, from the cheaper food materials, nutritious and palatable dishes, which should find a ready demand at paying prices.

[11] The opening statement of the Guide to the Rumford Kitchen: An Exhibit made by the State of Massachusetts in connection with the Bureau of Hygiene and Sanitation (World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893) by General Francis A. Walker explains:[33] The exhibit known as the Rumford Kitchen is the outgrowth of the work, in the application of the principles of chemistry to the science of cooking, which has for three years been carried on as an educational agency by Mrs. Robert H. Richards and Mrs. Dr. John J. Abel, with pecuniary assistance from certain public-spirited citizens of Boston.

The Massachusetts Board of World's Fair Managers, ... believing that such practical demonstration of the usefulness of domestic science could not fail to be of advantage to multitudes of visitors to the Columbian Exposition, have invited the ladies named to open the Rumford Kitchen as a part of the exhibit of Massachusetts in connection with the Bureau of Hygiene and Sanitation.

"The first commercially available "modern" kitchen ranges began to appear about 1800, they were the invention of an American named Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count von Rumford.

A first, major program was started in some Boston high schools in 1894 to provide nutritional meals at low prices to children who would not normally have them.

Due in large part to Ellen Richards and Edward Atkinson, the New England Kitchen ran the program as a 'private enterprise' that paid for itself many times over.