[1] The daughter of William Herbert, 1st Marquess of Powis, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Somerset, Frances was born into a Roman Catholic Jacobite family.
Her family played an active part in the various Jacobite risings throughout the late 17th and early 18th centuries; her father personally helped Mary of Modena and James, Prince of Wales escape after the Glorious Revolution of 1688; and her sister Winifred's husband William Maxwell, 5th Earl of Nithsdale was captured at Preston together with other Jacobite leaders, found guilty of treason and sentenced to death.
Frances married a fellow Jacobite in 1680, the Scottish Kenneth Mackenzie, 4th Earl of Seaforth.
Ten years into their marriage, Kenneth was sent off to head a rising in Scotland.
After her husband's death, she remained in Paris, and died there on 18 December 1732, aged 73.