Emily Kellogg Beach was born in Windsor Locks, Connecticut on June 7, 1871, to J. Wickliffe Beach and Maria Talcott Beach. Her father was a Congregational minister and founder, principal, and classics teacher at the Robbins School in Norfolk, Connecticut. Her mother was a member of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary Class of 1858. Beach attended Hillhouse High School from 1885-1889. She graduated from Mount Holyoke Seminary and College with a Bachelor of the Arts degree in 1893; her sister, Grace, graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1900. Beach worked as a teacher at Hillhouse High School in New Haven, Connecticut from 1894-1898. She took classes at Yale University from 1897-1898 and 1909-1910. She taught at Stratford High School from 1901-1903 and at Miss Baird's Private School in Norwalk, Connecticut from 1903-1905. She was an executive secretary for the Young Woman's Christian Association (YWCA) National Board in Worcester, Massachusetts from 1907-1908. She was the assistant editor for the statistical atlas of missions for the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910. She also assisted in compiling maps for Dr. William E. Stamps' work on missions. She resumed teaching math, science, history, Latin, and Greek at Hillhouse High School in 1914 and taught until her retirement in 1936. Beach did American Red Cross work during World War I. She was involved in the YWCA, the Society of Mayflower Descendents, the Mount Holyoke College Club of New Haven, and her Congregational Church throughout her retirement. She died in New Haven on May 26, 1955, at the age of eighty-three.