[1] Courtney was educated at the private Anglo-French College in Kensington and the Manse boarding-school in Malvern before spending seven months in Dresden studying the German language.

[4][7] In April 1915, Aletta Jacobs, a suffragist in the Netherlands, invited suffrage members from around the world to an International Congress of Women in The Hague.

The attendees included Mary Sheepshanks, Jane Addams, Grace Abbott, Lida Gustava Heymann, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Emily Hobhouse, Chrystal Macmillan and Rosika Schwimmer.

In 1928, she became a member of the Executive Committee of the British League of Nations Union and in 1939 (the year World War II would begin) was elected Vice-Chairman.

She helped establish the Adult Suffrage Society in 1916 and as joint secretary she lobbied members of the House of Commons to extend the franchise until the Qualification of Women Act was passed in 1918.

As well as advocating the same voting rights as men, the organisation also campaigned for equal pay, fairer divorce laws and an end to the discrimination against women in the professions.