Born in Aberlour parish to a local surgeon, she was educated in Hampshire, and was left an only child when her elder brother died in India in 1852.

She lived unconventionally for a woman of her time, dressing in a manner one newspaper called "manly", and entering into what was described as a form of marriage with a female companion, Charlotte Temple, whom she had met in London in 1864.

[1][2] Her father was a local surgeon in Aberlour, Moray,[3][4] and her mother, who was from the influential Grant family, was thought to have married beneath her station.

While she was in her teens, Macpherson Grant attended school in Hampstead, in north London, studying with Mary Ann Stodart, a writer and activist for women's education.

[14] As the three men were absentee landlords, affairs on their estates were managed by a team of local attorneys in Kingston, with help from the bookkeepers and overseers who lived on the plantations.

[15] This arrangement created issues in settling the debts of their estates after Donaldson's death in 1807, and Thomson's in 1818, resulting in years of litigation among the heirs.

[17] The trustees in Jamaica, John Meek and Joseph Green, resisted these efforts and ignored orders to sell issued by the High Court of Chancery.

[b][1][2] He also left her an outright settlement of £20,500[c] payable at his death provided she had attained a majority of twenty years of age, an annuity of £1,500,[d] and several pieces of jewellery and personal property.

[23][24][25] When Orange Vale was first established in 1780,[26] its main source of income was its coffee crop, supplemented by selling or hiring out its slave labourers until 1813.

[28] By the time Macpherson Grant inherited the plantation, it was economically failing,[29] and the sale of cattle had become its principal means of generating revenue.

[2][31][32][33] They added bay windows to some of the rooms, expanded the service quarters to make space for a new ballroom, and built a porte-cochère at the principal entrance.

[31] Macpherson Grant spent her time salmon fishing and travelling, leaving the management of her Jamaican estates to her agents, Milne & Co in Elgin.

"[4][35] Macpherson Grant and Temple returned to live in Aberlour House, and spent their time engaging in field sports and breeding livestock.

[4] According to the historian Rachel Lang, the scale of her wealth, and of her charitable donations, afforded her "considerable social leeway" and allowed her to be accepted into society.

Macpherson Grant's father also tried to persuade her to reduce her intake; she temporarily stopped drinking when he moved into Aberlour House in 1870, but resumed after he died in April 1871.

On 8 March 1873, Gibson-Craig & Co produced another will, leaving the whole of her estate in trust, with a provision that Temple inherit it, or be paid a legacy of £20,000[e] in the event that any children of Macpherson Grant should contest the settlement.

She provided the organ for Inverness Cathedral, which was built between 1866 and 1869 by the architect Alexander Ross,[1][2][39] and in 1874 she persuaded Canon Charles Jupp to come to Aberlour to act as her personal chaplain with the promise to build an orphanage with a church and school.

Macpherson Grant's response to this betrothal was mixed: at times, she seemed positive, and offered to host the wedding at Aberlour House; but she also showed distress at the prospect of Temple leaving her.

Unhappy with this new arrangement, and with what he saw as Temple's interfering in his affairs, Keir drew up a deed of revocation, which would cancel Macpherson Grant's existing wills.

[50] An 1882 account of the court case noted that the closure denied the public "the full revelation of a curious, an interesting, and instructive romance".

[40][55] The Proctors, unable to afford the expense of maintaining the estate, sold it to John Ritchie Findlay, the proprietor of The Scotsman newspaper.

Findlay expanded his land holdings in the area and was considered to be a benevolent landlord who worked to better the living conditions of his tenant farmers.