After her father's death in 1870, she was raised in the home of Reverend Charles McEwen Hyde, an American missionary.

[1] Her inheritance from her father's estate, including the proceeds of land sold to the United States government for the Pearl Harbor Naval Station, and her ex-husband's role as trustee of the estate, were matters of protracted legal attention.

In 1886, at age 17, she married Charles Augustus Brown, a white American businessman from Massachusetts.

[10] Her sons were George (1887–1946) and Francis (1892–1976), who was awarded the Croix de Guerre in World War I,[11] and became a golf professional and developer of the Keawaiki Bay residential complex.

[12][13] A section of Mililani Mauka on Oahu is named after Irene Īʻī Brown Holloway.