She was depicted several times by Edward Burne-Jones, and commissioned works by Edwin Lutyens, Eric Gill, and William Nicholson.

Her father became the head of the family business which imported dry goods from India and Graham's port from Portugal.

They had four children: In 1900 Frances Horner, her husband and young family left Mells Park for the nearby and more manageable Manor House.

Lutyens designed the replacement for the banker and politician Reginald McKenna and his wife Pamela (née Jekyll).

Horner became a hostess at Mells, entertaining their circle of artists and intellectuals, the Souls, which included Edwin Lutyens, H. H. Asquith and R. B. Haldane.

She undertook elaborate embroidery work: an example designed by Burne-Jones, L'Amor che mouve il Sole e Faltre Stelle ("The love that moves the sun and other stars", a quotation from Dante's Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII, line 145) hangs in St Andrew's Church, Mells.

The church also houses a stained glass window by William Nicholson, commissioned as a memorial to her husband Sir John Horner, and the large equestrian statue that she commissioned as a memorial to her elder son, Edward Horner, which includes a bronze statue by Alfred Munnings installed in 1923 on a plinth by Lutyens, with lettering by Eric Gill.