Torrence was an undergraduate at
Tufts University. She completed her Ph.D. in 1991 at the
University of Virginia; her dissertation,
The Coordination of a Hexagonal-Barbilian Plane by a Quadratic Jordan Algebra, was supervised by John Faulkner. She was Claire Booth Luce assistant professor at
Trinity Washington University from 1991 to 1994, before joining the Randolph–Macon College faculty in 1994. She earned tenure there in 1999, and became a full professor in 2008. She retired in 2021, and was given the Bruce M. Unger Award by Randolph–Macon College on the occasion of her retirement. She served as president of
Pi Mu Epsilon, the US national honor society in mathematics, from 2011 to 2014. The Maryland-District of Columbia-Virginia Section of the
Mathematical Association of America gave her their Sister Helen Christensen Service Award in 2019. ==Selected works==