At the conclusion of the Civil War, her grandparents, Robert Williams and Helena Dzialynsky, relocated with their five daughters from Jasper, Florida, to Tallahassee.

[2] Williams's daughter Henrietta married Julius Diamond, a Tallahassee merchant and city commissioner in 1879.

[3] Diamond had emigrated from Prussia after the Civil War and was an early merchant in Tallahassee who owned several downtown buildings, an insurance business and farmland.

[4] Contributions went to early childhood education programs, the Salvation Army, nursing homes,[1] hospitals, Black charities, research institutions,[7] and Tallahassee's Temple Israel.

[3] She was a significant benefactor to Florida State University,[3] donating properties worth six figures during the 1970s and 1980s[1] that partially endowed a chair in the College of Education.

She also established two scholarships for disadvantaged scholars, and gave to the Alumni Association and the Department of Educational Research, Development, and Foundations.

[4] Designated the primary performance venue for Florida State University, it is on the first floor of the Westcott Building.

[10] She willed her estate to the Ruby Diamond Foundation, a charitable trust to continue support for 24 nonprofit entities.

Each year she provided a coupon for fertilizer and vegetable seed to each welfare recipient in Leon County.

Diamond stated, "It gives the elderly people a feeling of welcome and security at mealtime when told that the vegetables came from their own garden."

[4] Ruby and Sydney Diamond joined other Jewish community members to found Temple Israel in 1937.