Farr's first acting experience was in amateur productions with the Bedford Park Dramatics Club, in which her sister Henrietta and brother-in-law Henry were active members.

[5] She continued taking minor roles at the Folly, but changed her stage name back to Florence Farr when she began performing at the Gaiety Theatre in May.

[3] In early 1890, Farr moved in with her sister, Henrietta, and brother-in-law, painter and stage designer Henry Marriott Paget, to Bedford Park, a bohemian London enclave of intellectuals, artists and writers.

Bedford Park was known for its "free thinkers" and the "New Woman"(a term coined by Sarah Grand), where women participated in discussions on politics, art, literature and philosophy on an equal basis with men.

Shaw was in the audience to review the play, which he called "an hour's transparent Arcadian make-believe",[8] but was greatly impressed with Farr's performance, as well as her "startling beauty, large expressive eyes, crescent eyebrows, and luminous smile.

Shaw wrote that she reacted vehemently against Victorian sexual and domestic morality and was dauntless in publicly championing unpopular causes such as campaigning for the welfare of prostitutes.

"[10] In his review of A Sicilian Idyll, Yeats wrote, "Mrs. Edward Emery (Florence Farr) …won universal praise with her striking beauty and subtle gesture and fine delivery of the verse.

Farr was also the first woman in England to perform in Ibsen's plays, in particular the role of Rebecca West in the first English production of Rosmersholm, at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1891, which gained her critical acclaim.

[8] The character of Rebecca West is a 'New Woman' who rejects the ethical systems of Victorian Era Christianity, which for Florence Farr was a virtual typecast role.

A Comedy of Sighs by John Todhunter was quickly substituted, with Farr in the leading role, but the play was badly received and the entire venture was nearly a disaster.

[3] But during that same period of her life Farr was sidetracked from her theatrical career, much to the chagrin of Shaw ("...and now you think to undo the work of all these years by a phrase and a shilling's worth of esoteric Egyptology," he wrote her in 1896)[11] by her involvement with Yeats in the secret occult society The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Farr was initiated into the Isis-Urania Temple of the Order of the Golden Dawn in London by Yeats in July 1890[12] taking the magical motto Sapientia Sapienti Dona Data (Latin: "Wisdom is a gift given to the wise").

[3] Spiritualism and Theosophy were very popular in the late Victorian Era but, unlike some of her contemporaries, Farr practiced magic, including the classic mystical techniques of invocation and evocation.

With the resignation in 1897 of William Wynn Westcott, one of the co-founders of the Order, Farr replaced him as "Chief Adept in Anglia", becoming the leader of the English lodges, and the official representative of Samuel MacGregor-Mathers, the only remaining founder, who lived in Paris.

Farr remained in her Chief Adept position for a time, but resigned in January 1902 in the wake of a fraud scandal concerning associates of Mathers that exposed the once secret society to public ridicule.

While in America she met and collaborated with scenic painter and Tarot card artist Pamela Colman Smith, who worked as Farr's stage manager.

Certainly the organizational skills she learned as the Praemonstratrix of the Golden Dawn served Farr in her new position, and due to her tolerance and respect for the Tamil traditions, the school thrived under her administration.

In Farr's final letter to Yeats, she included a humorous drawing of herself with her mastectomy scar, and wrote: "Last December I became an Amazon and my left breast and pectoral muscle were removed.