The club was founded by abolitionist, suffragist, mother, and Los Angeles homemaker Caroline Severance in 1891, with 87 other women in the reading room of the Hollenbeck Hotel, then located at Second and Broadway.

Her known political associations gave the FMC a (deserved) reputation as a politically-active powerhouse for community improvement in Los Angeles.

Its two auditoriums and seating for nearly 2,000 made it suitable to the Friday Morning Club's popular arts and theater programs in the 1920s and 1930s.

[2] The Friday Morning Club's members continued to meet and serve the community, from the leased-back 5th floor and later rented quarters on Wilshire Boulevard, until the 1990s.

[2][7] Today, the Ebell of Los Angeles is the largest functioning woman's club in the city, with approximately 400 members and a large 1927 clubhouse in the Hancock Park district.