Sarah Elizabeth Arny was born on November 11, 1906 in Cleveland, Ohio. Her father was Henry Vinecomb Arny, a professor of chemistry. After graduating from Montclair, New Jersey High School, she came to Mount Holyoke College in September, 1924. She majored in botany with a minor in history and graduated in 1928. She received her M.S. degree for botany and biochemistry from Tulane University in 1930 and worked at Columbia University. She worked on vitamin testing and research before she married accountant Harold Alan Holmes on July 20, 1935 and had two children before 1942. She did volunteer work for local hospitals and the Girl Scouts and was a laboratory assistant at a local high school. Holmes obtained a Master of Library Science from Rutgers University and worked as a technical librarian after 1962.