Her degree was gained in 1919 at Imperial College London for research on the potato wart disease (Synchytrium endobioticum).

Curtis was also elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London for her contributions to botanical research.

[1] She represented Cawthron at the 1948 Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Hobart.

Between 1921 and 1952 Curtis published 27 research papers on a range of topics in mycology and plant pathology, mainly in relation to the Nelson region.

[2] In 1966 Curtis married Sir Theodore Rigg, an agricultural chemist and scientific administrator, who was a widower following the death of his first wife, Esther Mary White, seven years earlier.

The Bishop of Nelson, Peter Sutton, paid tribute to her service to science at the Thomas Cawthron Memorial Lecture in 1994 and, following her death at Nelson on 5 September that year, conducted her funeral service at St Barnabas' Church, Stoke.