Her grandfather, Charles Frederick Ernest Minnigerode, was a German classics professor and clergyman, known as the "Father Confessor of the Confederacy" because he was the pastor of a prominent Episcopal church in Richmond, Virginia.

She joined an American Red Cross "mercy ship" to work at a hospital in Kiev in 1914, serving as supervising nurse for Unit C, under senior supervisor Helen Scott Hay.

[5] From 1915 to 1917, she directed the Columbia Hospital for Women in Washington D.C.;[6] then she joined the staff of Clara Noyes at American Red Cross headquarters in that city.

[9] She was considered part of the informal "Women's Cabinet" in Washington in 1925, along with Grace Abbott, Kathryn Sellers, and Mabel Walker Willebrandt.

[15] In 1994, the U. S. Public Health Service Nursing Research Conference honored Lucy Minnigerode, and her image was used for the event's poster.