Little is known of the brief life of Mary Olivia Lucas. She was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and married Charlestonian George Washington Harby in New Orleans in 1828, when she was not yet 20. Her new husband operated a school for boys, which he had founded himself, and was a teacher and writer. Harby likely inherited his gift for teaching from his grandfather, Isaac Harby, the noted Charleston scholar, writer and Jewish reformer who had previously served as lapidary to the emperor of Morocco. In any case, Olivia did not survive long enough to provide for a continuation of the Harby line – she died of cholera while visiting her parents in Louisville in 1834. Harby would remarry the following year.