She was the last surviving member of the original twelve companies of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) missionaries sent to Hawaii between 1820 and 1848.

Mary Sophia Hyde was born in the Buffalo Creek Reservation, in western New York State near current-day West Seneca.

The Rices sailed in the ninth company of missionaries to Hawaii from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) on the ship Gloucester, leaving from Boston on November 14, 1840, and arriving in Honolulu on May 21, 1841.

[3] The Rice and Paris families intended to proceed to Oregon Territory, but after being told of Indian uprisings at the Whitman Mission, they decided to stay in Hawaii.

[4] Their first posting after learning the Hawaiian language was the remote Wānanalua mission station in the Hana district, on the eastern coast of the island of Maui.

[11] In widowhood, Rice traveled to Germany with her grandchildren, and worked as a matron at Mills Seminary in California, before returning to Hawaii permanently in 1900.

[16] It opened in 1917, and soon added a kindergarten; the children's program continues at the site today, as the Mother Rice Preschool.