She was baptised on 16 July 1844 at St Pancras Old Church in London, and was a daughter of the author William Mudford, who by the time of Sophia's baptism was living at Harrington Square.

[7][8][6][9] Sophia and Thomas were married at St George's Hanover Square Church London, on 31 August 1868.

[8][10] Henri trained as a painter at the École des Beaux Arts, but soon became interested in the new mechanical inventions that were appearing at the end of the 19th century.

Brother Maurice Farman also began cycle racing at the same age and started winning prizes.

[15] On 25 June 1893, Henri went by bicycle from Paris to Madrid with the journalist, author, and French cyclist Edouard de Perrodil.

[18][5] On 31 January 1895, at the Vélodrome d'Hiver, the Farman brothers broke the tandem bicycle record, covering 44.906 kilometres in an hour.

He had an accident during the elimination trials for the 1905 Gordon Bennett Cup, on 16 June, over the hilly Auvergne circuit.

While on the last round of this circuit, descending the Clermont Ferrand hill, on one of the turns in that descent, his car skidded.

[25][26] He started practicing in 1907 with a homemade biplane glider on the sandhills of Le Touquet, after first experimenting with model aeroplanes of different sizes.

[27] Henri then decided he wanted a machine powered plane, and ordered a Voisin 1907 biplane on 1 June 1907.

Henri flew from his hangars at Camp de Châlons, Bouy,[5][29][35] to Reims, landing at the cavalry ground.

In October 1909 he appeared at the Blackpool Aviation Week, Britain's first air show, at which he won over £2000 in prizes.

[41] In partnership with his two brothers Maurice and Richard (Dick), he built a highly successful and innovative aircraft manufacturing plant.

The Farman Aircraft company's Goliath was the first long-distance passenger airliner, beginning regular Paris-London (Croydon Airport) flights on 8 February 1919.

Along with Maurice, he retired in 1937 when the French Popular Front government nationalised the aircraft industry; Farman's company becoming part of the Societe Nationale de Constructions Aeronautiques du Centre.