Mary Elizabeth Price was born in 1877 in West Virginia, and at an early age she moved with her Quaker family back to the familial farm in  Solebury (Bucks County) Pennsylvania. There she received her education at the Philadelphia School of Industrial Arts and later at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

During her long and active career, Price achieved notable exhibition history including exhibitions at the Corcoran Biennial, National Academy of Design, and in 1927 she won the Carnegie Prize for the best oil painting by an American Artist in the exhibition. She first exhibited with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1914 and every year between 1926 and 1943. She joined the Philadelphia Ten in 1921 and exhibited with them as well for many years. In other exhibitions she showed alongside Rae Sloan Bredin, Daniel Garber, Henry Snell and John Folinsbee.

She made numerous trips abroad garnering subject material from the landscapes, streets and people in Italy and France. Most of her adult life was lived in a cottage fronting on the Delaware River in Bucks County, named Pumpkinseed Cottage and she frequently painted the flowers of her garden and the landscapes from the river views. Best known for her flower compositions, her work also includes figures, landscapes, marine and genre.

Price came from a family that was well connected in the art world of New York and Bucks County. One of her brothers in Manhattan, Frederic Newlin Price, ran Feragil Galleries, which represented Price as well as such New Hope artists as Daniel Garber and Henry Snell.

Mary Elizabeth Price never married and died in 1965.