Temple was born in Knoxville in 1856, the only child of
Oliver Perry Temple (1820–1907) and Scotia Caledonia Hume. During Temple's early years, her parents' home, Melrose, was a center of the city's social life, where guests such as Governor
William G. Brownlow, presidential candidate
John Bell, and Civil War generals
John G. Foster and
Ulysses S. Grant were entertained. In the early 1870s. Temple was educated at the
East Tennessee Female Institute in Knoxville, where she was classmates with the painter
Adelia Armstrong Lutz. She then attended
Vassar College, graduating with a bachelor of arts in 1877. In 1912, she edited and published
Notable Men of Tennessee, a collection of biographies written by her late father. In 1919, Temple donated $25,000 to the University of Tennessee for the establishment of a plant research foundation in memory of her father. She spent her later years entertaining guests at her Knoxville home, and (during winters) at the
Mayflower and
Willard hotels in
Washington, D.C. She died at her house on Hill Avenue in Downtown Knoxville in 1929. Librarian Mary Utopia Rothrock, in a brief biography of Temple in her book,
The French Broad-Holston Country, wrote, "Many interesting legends cluster about Miss Temple and her social reign for four decades of Knoxville history." ==Mary Boyce Temple House==