During the 1890s, Simpson was a student at the National Art Training School, NATS, in London where she was taught by the sculptor Édouard Lantéri.
[1] Among her contemporaries at NATS, which became the Royal College of Art in 1896, were a number of other notable female sculptors including Margaret Giles, Ruby Levick, Esther Moore, Florence Steele and Lucy Gwendolen Williams.
[2] In 1894 Simpson won a gold medal and travelling scholarship in the National Art Competition for a silver low relief book cover.
[1] While still a student, Simpson had two pieces of work, including a bronze casket, shown at the Royal Academy in London and also exhibited with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society.
[1] There she contracted typhoid fever and died later that year aged 26.