Edward Jordan served as Solicitor of the Treasury Department under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, and her family lived in Washington, D.C., for that part of her childhood.

She was educated in the latter subject by astronomer and Vassar professor Maria Mitchell, who was also a distant relative of her future husband, Henry Clay Folger, via their common ancestor, Peter Foulger.

[2] After graduating from Vassar in 1879, she worked in Brooklyn for six years as an instructor in the college-prep section of a private girls' school, Miss Hotchkiss's Nassau Institute.

[4] Folger was a graduate of Columbia Law School, and a young oil-company executive, who later became the president and then the chairman of Standard Oil of New York.

Among these acquisitions was the purple robe worn by Marlowe during her performance of Portia in The Merchant of Venice, which Emily wore when she prepared to bathe at the Homestead.

[13] After her husband's death, Emily continued to add to the Library's collection; these acquisitions included the Ashbourne portrait, which she incorrectly believed to be of William Shakespeare.

Because of the 1929 stock-market crash, Henry Folger's estate was greatly reduced and could not cover the full cost of building and opening the library.

Emily Folger, who served as executor of her husband's estate, donated millions of dollars of her own funds to finish construction and operate the library.

[16] Her sister Mary Augusta Jordan, who had been a professor at Vassar and Smith College, funded the Library's first research scholarship.

[17] Emily's involvement with the Library continued after its opening; beginning in 1934, she supported California actress Florence Locke in the latter's efforts to perform Ellen Terry's lectures on Shakespeare's Triumphant Women.