She was born in 1835, in Roscore, County Offaly, Ireland to parents John Doyle and Eliza Molloy and was baptised on August 18, 1835 in the Parish of Rahan.

[1][2][3][4] In the 1850s, she joined the Congregation of our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, at the Mother House, located in Angers, France.

The sisters were responding to a request from the Roman Catholic Bishop of Melbourne, James Goold, who wanted to establish a reformatory for girls in his diocese.

[1] The sisters purchased a manor known as Abbotsford House, which had been built in 1840 by John Orr; the estate included six acres of land on the bank of the Yarra river.

[1] Mary of St. Joseph died on 13 June 1869, after months of increasing health problems and an acute illness of several weeks.