 The daughter of Reverend John Stevens Henslow, a botany professor at the University of Cambridge, she was born Frances Harriet Henslow in Cambridge.In 1851, she married Joseph Dalton Hooker; the couple had four sons and three daughters.Her daughter Harriet Anne Thiselton-Dyer was a botanical illustrator; her son Reginald Hawthorn Hooker was a statistician.