Her early childhood was mostly spent in Wy Yung, a tiny settlement near Bairnsdale, where she laboured on her parents' "selection" or small farm.

After failing to qualify as a teacher she found work in Bairnsdale as a photographic retoucher in 1887, and married the Tasmanian farmer and miner William Pitt in 1893 with whom she lived in Tasmania, the Western Australian goldfields, Bairnsdale again and finally Melbourne where she joined the Victorian Socialist Party and became editor of its journal The Socialist.

Her political views were not identical with his, however; notably, and unlike O'Dowd, Marie Pitt took a strong pacifist line.

Another matter on which they differed was the endemic racism of the Australian labour movement; Marie Pitt, in a word, supported it and spoke of the "woman's instinct for racial purity".

[3] Pitt won the Australian Broadcasting Commission national songwriting competition in 1944 with her entry Ave, Australia.