Her father was the head of the chemical department at the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute established in 1904 at Pusa in Bihar, India.
[2] Leather was a boarder at Liverpool High School for Girls in 1911,[3] and it is assumed both her older sisters were in India with their father, as Alice Muriel married Claud Mews Mackenzie Hutchinson in 1914.
[7] In 1950-51 Leather was elected president of the Women's Engineering Society[13] succeeding Frances Heywood in the role.
[7] She campaigned for equal pay in the sector and visited schools to encourage girls to take up engineering as a profession.
Leather hosted Beatrice Hicks, President of the recently formed American Society of Women Engineers when she visited the Festival of Britain.