Her father was Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, an abolitionist and the founder of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind.

[3] Her mother Julia Ward Howe wrote the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".

He would accept a management position in 1876 at his family's paper mill at Gardiner, Maine, where the couple moved with their three children.

Her children's book Tirra Lirra won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1959.

Her home in Gardiner, the Laura E. Richards House, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.