Frances Elizabeth Herring moved from England to New Westminster, BC, where she became a journalist and novelist.

Frances Elizabeth Herring was born in King's Lynn, Worfolk, England, to John Jonathan Herring (1815-1855) and Harriet Clarke (b. c1821). She was educated in Reading, Berkshire, England, where she later taught briefly. Believing that a prosperous future would be found in the colonies, and reportedly due also to family conflict, Frances left England for Canada in 1874 and settled in British Columbia.

Soon after her arrival, she married her cousin, Arthur May Herring (1851-1941), who had come to North America as a child. Their wedding took place on 27 December 1874 in New Westminster, BC. The couple lived in Langley, BC, where a town had been established around the old Hudson's Bay fort. Frances was certified as a teacher by British Columbia's Board of Education in July 1875, and was appointed as a teacher at the Langley school in March 1876. According to a school superintendent there, she was "one of our best teachers." During her time teaching in Langley, Frances presented "controversial and explicitly political" papers at the British Columbia Teachers' Convention.

Frances left Langley in 1878 and relocated to New Westminster, where Arthur had established a wholesale and retail drug business. During the 1880s, Frances spent much of her time devoted to child rearing and domestic chores. She gave birth to eight children, although only three boys and one girl lived to adulthood. During the last decade of the nineteenth century, Frances became more involved in journalism, and in 1892 became the editor of the column for the , which focused on recipes, household hints, and inspirational stories for career women, wives, and mothers. She became the British Columbia correspondent for the while John Stephen Willison (1856-1927) was editor. She also continued her work in philanthropy and community politics, which had begun years earlier. Frances served as President of the Royal Columbian Hospital Women's Auxiliary and was a member of the National Council of Women of Canada. During 1909 and 1910, she was the Secretary-Treasurer of the Literature Committee of the New Westminster branch of the Woman's Auxiliary to the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, an organization that distributed religious material throughout the province.

In addition to her journalistic and philanthropic work, Frances wrote fiction, often influenced by her immigrant experience, proto-feminist attitudes, and the racism prevalent during the turn of the century. She published her own short stories in her column at the , which were later published in national magazines. She also wrote six novels, five of which were set in British Columbia. Her works often deal with the experience of white women in the context of immigration, including settlement and relationships with Indigenous peoples, and were successful at the time. Both (1903) and (1904) went into second printings. Many of her narratives combined the names and occurrences of real people with fictional stories, leading some to suggest an autobiographical element.

Frances continued to write until shortly before her death from diabetes on 16 November 1916. For a more detailed biography, see her entry in the .