The Mary Louis Academy was founded in 1936, by the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, New York, as the fruition of their late General Superior, Mother Mary Louis's, dream to found an academy for young women in Queens. Archbishop Thomas Edmund Molloy had a hand in the birth of TMLA due to his strong personal conviction that the girls of the Diocese of Brooklyn deserved an academy all their own which would foster all of their individual talents and guide them to success.