Greville worked as a
seamstress, but the
1890s depression led her to move to the goldfields at
West Wyalong, where she helped to establish a local branch of the
Political Labour League. She married miner and union organiser Hector Greville on 30 August 1894, and despite moving frequently to support the family, they reportedly had a happy marriage. Henrietta Greville became an organiser for the
Australian Workers' Union and later became influential in the Women Workers' Union, serving as its delegate to the
Trades and Labour Council. In 1902 the family was in
Sydney, where Greville became associated with
Bertha McNamara's radical group, and in 1908 she became an organiser for the White Workers' Union. An anti-
conscription campaigner, she and
Eva Seery were the first women endorsed for a federal election by a major political party when they ran for the
1917 federal election as
Labor candidates, albeit in safe conservative seats (Greville was defeated in
Wentworth). She subsequently stood for the state seat of
Vaucluse in 1927. Greville studied economics from 1914 to 1916 and became branch secretary of the Workers' Educational Association of New South Wales at
Lithgow in 1918, moving to the executive in 1919 and president (the first female president) in 1920. She remained active for many years, being particularly associated with
sex education, and was directing groups aged 94. Her husband died in 1938, but Greville remained a public figure, and in 1945 was made a life member of the
Union of Australian Women. Around this time, she began to identify more with the
Communist Party of Australia, which she supported but did not join. She was appointed a
Member of the Order of the British Empire in January 1958. She died aged 102 at
Lakemba, Sydney, in 1964 and was cremated. A block of pensioners' units was named in her memory in that year. She was survived by two sons and a daughter of her second marriage. ==References==