Alice Lillian Wright was born August 22, 1894, in Charlottetown, P.E.I., and died in March 15, 2000 (age 105) in Vancouver, British Columbia. After graduation from the Vancouver General Hospital School of Nursing in 1918, she first worked as a pediatric head nurse and pediatrics instructor at Vancouver General Hospital, then in hospitals in California and New York. She received her Bachelor of Science from Teacher's College, Columbia University, New York, in 1941. She also took a post-graduate course in pediatrics at New York Nursery and Children's Hospital, as well as a special course at the Kenny Institute, University of Minnesota.

She was Registrar and Executive Secretary of the Registered Nurses Association of B.C. from 1943 to her retirement in 1960. During that portion of her career, she initiated trail-blazing efforts to establish collective bargaining for nurses in B.C. and in Canada. She was named an Honorary Life Member of the Registered Nurses Association of B.C. in 1952 as a tribute to her pioneering work in labour relations for B.C. nurses and her efforts to improve standards of nursing education in the province. She was named an Honorary Life Member of the Canadian Nurses Association in 1962 for her pioneering labour relations work and for her many professional contributions nationally and internationally through the International Council of Nurses.

She started collecting antique infant feeding devices during the 1930s and amassed a valuable collection of fifteen items, which she donated to UBC Woodward Library Special Collections in 1966. This collection has been added to by other serious collectors and now contains more than forty items.