Edith Elizabeth Downing was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1857 and attended Cardiff School of Art in the early 1880s. In 1887, after the death of her father the previous year, she moved to London and enrolled at in National Art Training School in South Kensington [later Royal College of Art] where she was taught by Édouard Lanteri (1848-1917), following which she studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London in 1892-93. She then embarked on a career as a painter and sculptor. Between 1890 and 1910 her work was exhibited at the Royal Academy and Society of Women Artists in London; the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; and at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts. She also participated in the exhibitions of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in London in 1899, 1903 and 1906.