She graduated in the Great Hall at Sydney University on Saturday 14 April 1888, becoming the first woman to graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Sydney.

She was presented by Professor Liversidge to the Chancellor Sir William Manning who conferred the degree.

[1] She first taught botany at St Catherine's School, Waverley from 1888, brought in by then headmistress, Helen Phillips.

[5] She was the first headmistress of Ipswich Girls' Grammar School, Queensland, from its opening in 1892 until 1901, being selected from a group of thirty applicants 'of unusual merit'.

[7] In 1903 she founded Girton College, a girls' boarding school in Toowoomba, which closed in 1910.