She migrated to the United States with her family and completed her secondary education at Central High School in Detroit, Michigan in 1945.
[1] Farr graduated from Michigan State University with a BSc and then MSc in botany.
At the University of Iowa she was awarded a PhD in 1957, for her thesis "Taxonomic studies on Myxomycetes".
She then joined the Mycology Laboratory at the United States Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Maryland.
[3] Her author abbreviation is listed as M. L. Farr in Harvard University's Index of Botanists.