Higham had lived in Northamptonshire or Oxfordshire[1] before she arrived with her husband John and two children in Western Australia aboard the Sabrina in 1853 with 300 other passengers.

[4] Higham was denied access to a number of organisations owing to her gender but this did not prevent her becoming a founding member of the Fremantle Chamber of Commerce.

An early success was to become the chairman of the Fremantle Roads Board at a meeting at his mother's house in 1871.

(That committee became the Cockburn Districts Road Board in 1955 and population growth meant that a new town was both demanded and justifiable.

[2] In 1875, the business was taking delivery of a 20-metre locally built schooner, Brothers, which they had ordered for pearl fishing.