She moved to St. Louis, Missouri, when the family shoe business, Edison Brothers Inc., relocated.
She graduated from John Burroughs School in 1937, and attended Goucher College in Baltimore, but later transferred to Washington University in St Louis.
Since then, ScholarShop stores in Webster Groves and Clayton have generated about $23 million in interest-free loans and grants for college students.
She is also noted with establishing such local traditions as the Greater St. Louis Book Fair, the Gypsy Caravan (benefiting the St. Louis Symphony), the Little Shop Around the Corner (benefiting the Missouri Botanical Garden), as well as the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House at Faust County Park in Chesterfield, Missouri, which was inspired from her travels to Thailand visiting the butterfly house.
[2] In the 1980s, Newman was the first executive director of Forest Park Forever, the nonprofit organization that has helped turn Forest Park into one of the region's biggest attractions, which has grown to a $6.5 million annual operating budget and an endowment of more than $75 million.