Born in Petworth, West Sussex, as Frances Cooper, she was the illegitimate daughter of a farm worker.
She moved to Newcastle upon Tyne when she was fifteen, with the house painter James Morrison, the two marrying only when she became pregnant, four or five years later.
In 1838, she published "The Influence of the Present Marriage system upon the Character and Interests of Females, contrasted with that proposed by Robert Owen Esq.
", in which she argued that in Owen's utopian communities, marriage laws would be strictly enforced, to the benefit of women.
She travelled frequently to speak on Owen's theories, particularly their implications for women, before she found work as a teacher in Hulme.