Alice Hughes was the eldest daughter of the portrait painter
Edward Hughes (1832–1908). After studying photography at the
London Polytechnic she opened a studio in 1891 next to her father's in
Gower Street, London, which she operated until December 1910. In her day, she was a leading photographer of royalty, fashionable women and children, producing elegant
platinotype prints. During her most successful periods, she employed up to 60 women and took up to 15 sittings a day. In 1914, for a short period before the
First World War, she ran a business in Berlin but returned to London at the beginning of the war, opening a studio in
Ebury Street in 1915. The Ebury Street studio was not as successful as her first business and she closed it in 1933, retiring to
Worthing where she died after a fall in her bedroom in 1939. From 1898 to 1909, she contributed several hundred portraits to
Country Life. In 1910, she sold 50,000 negatives to Speaight Ltd. == Assessment ==