Mary Lee Ware, daughter of Elizabeth Cabot (Lee) Ware and Charles Eliot Ware, was born to a wealthy Bostonian family and, with her mother, was the principal sponsor of the Harvard Museum of Natural History's famous Glass Flowers. She was an avid student of botany, particularly of the work of George Lincoln Goodale; a close friend and sponsor of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, creators of the Glass Flowers; and a leading philanthropist and farmer of Rindge, New Hampshire, and Boston, Massachusetts.