Darden was born in
Nansemond County, Virginia. Darden earned a bachelor's degrees in mathematics in 1957 from the
Hampton Institute, a historically black institute, and took a teaching position at S.H. Clarke Junior High School in
Portsmouth, Virginia. In the summer of 1958, Darden saw an opportunity for aspiring mathematicians created by the launch of Russian satellite
Sputnik and ensuing US interest in mathematics and science a year earlier, and she applied for and received a
National Science Foundation grant to attend the Summer Institute in Mathematics held at
North Carolina Central University. Here she met
Marjorie Lee Browne, the mathematician who directed the institute, who would encourage Darden to go on to graduate school. Darden earned a master's degree in 1960 at the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and a second master's degree in 1965 and Ph.D. in 1967 from
Syracuse University. Her dissertation was completed under the supervision of James Reid, "On the Direct Sums of Cyclic Groups". ==Contributions==