[2] The first woman hired to improve working conditions at Marks & Spencer in London,[3] Solomon was later instrumental in the exposure of British spy Kim Philby.

She was a daughter of Sophie Goldberg (1862–1926) and the Jewish Russian financier Grigori Benenson (1860–1939), who was related to the Rothschild family.

She had three siblings: an older brother, Jacob, who died in a German concentration camp during the First World War, and two sisters--Fira Benenson (Countess Ilinska), who became a leading American dress designer, and Manya Harari, who became a noted translator of Russian literature.

[5][6] The family's fortune was based on gold and oil; they settled in Britain in 1914, and lost much of their wealth as a result of the Russian Revolution in 1917.

[4][7] In the 1930s, prior to World War II, Solomon helped find homes for refugee children who fled to London from continental Europe.

These practices directly influenced the Labour concept of the welfare state and the creation of the British National Health Service in 1948.

[12] In 1937, while working in Spain as The Times correspondent on Franco's side of the Civil War, Philby proposed to Solomon that she might become a Soviet agent.

In August 1962, during a reception at the Weizmann Institute, Solomon told Rothschild that she thought that Tomás Harris and Philby were Soviet spies.

Flora Benenson was married to Harold Solomon, (19 January 1886 - 31 July 1930) a member of a London stockbroking family and a career soldier who was a brigadier-general in the First World War.

Flora Solomon died on 18 July 1984[1] and was buried next to her late husband at the Cimetière Israélite de La Tour-de-Peilz, in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland.