After attending high school in Chattanooga, Tennessee, she attended New York University's School of Pedagogy from 1902 to 1903, after which she became a student at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts during the 1905–06 academic year and won silver and bronze medals as well as an honorable mention for her color and black and white portraits,[1] From 1907 through 1912 she attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) where she won Cresson Traveling fellowships in 1908, 1909 and 1911 (among the first American women to be awarded the fellowship and the only woman to have been awarded three) allowing her to visit England, Wales, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Belgium and Spain.
She exhibited paintings twice at the Corcoran Museum in Washington, D.C. in 1912 ("Portrait") and 1916 ("Young Woman in Black").
From 1912 through 1917 she taught drawing and painting at The Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, while residing at 1719 Green Street, Philadelphia.
She began teaching at Central High School in Kalamazoo in the fall of 1922 where she remained employed until 1943.
Nina Ward was instrumental in founding the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts (KIA) where she was the first and only teacher for several years.