Dame Mary Ranken, Lady Herring, DBE, CStJ (née Lyle; 31 March 1895 – 26 October 1981) was an Australian medical practitioner and community worker.

"She broke taboos", Della Hilton later wrote, and "made forbidden subjects not only matters for discussion, but for action".

She attended Toorak College between 1906 and 1912, where she excelled both academically and at sport,[3] playing tennis, hockey, netball, and cricket, and competing in swimming.

[3] In 1918 she had met Edmund (Ned) Herring, then a young Australian captain in the British Army on leave from the Macedonian front of the Great War.

With her studies completed, Mary and Ned became formally engaged at Easter in 1921, and they were married on 6 April 1922 at Toorak Presbyterian Church.

His experience soon showed that his workload would be greatly reduced if antenatal care were provided, with mothers being monitored throughout their pregnancies.

[3] She banded together with George Simpson and Victor Wallace to establish the Women's Welfare Clinic to offer advice on birth control, at a time when many doctors and a large segment of the community were opposed to it.

[19] When Ned became acting governor for eight months in February 1949, Herring found Government House to be in a state of disrepair.

[21] In 1953, Herring travelled to London to attend the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, which she viewed from a seat inside Westminster Abbey.

In a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 10 July 1953, the new Queen made Herring a Commander of the Order of St John in recognition of her charity work.

Herring was a foundation member and first president of the Victorian Council of Social Service when it was formed in 1946,[25] and chairman of the Vera Scantlebury Brown Memorial Trust from 1946 to 1979.

Herring and Vera Scantlebury Brown had both attended Toorak College, and were also medical students at the University of Melbourne together.

[26] Before her death on 26 October 1981, aged 86, following a long illness,[3] Herring planned her own funeral service, requesting that no announcements be made until after she was buried.