[1][2] She went to Bryn Mawr College from 1909 until 1910[3] and there she played multiple sports, including hockey, basketball, and water polo.

[1] After graduating from Columbia she worked in multiple jobs including teaching art and science in New York City schools,[5]: 210  interior decorating, theater set designing, and rug making.

[4] She met William Beebe, the head of the Department of Tropical Research at the New York Zoological Society,[5] and he hired her to work as a staff artist recording the animals found on scientific expeditions, a job she held from 1917 until 1925.

In 1924, Helen Damrosch Tee-Van, Ruth Rose, and Cooper captured a large boa constrictor which caught the attention of the press describing the research expeditions.

[17] Following the 1924 expedition to British Guiana, Cooper wrote an article for The Atlantic Monthly about the challenges she faced in painting animals while in the jungle, and the delight she had in her unconventional job.

In the article she described the challenges of painting live animals, some of which managed to escape from their cages while she was working.

[22] Multiple women were part of the research crew including Marie Poland Fish, Ruth Rose, Helen Damrosch Tee-Van, and Lillian Segal.

[28] Cooper's later artistic works include painting a jungle-themed guest room in the Rye, New York home of George Putnam and Dorothy Binney Palmer.