Ethel Palmer Breitenstein was born on June 9, 1887 in Watervliet, New York to George P. Breitenstein and Caroline Stoneman Breitenstein. She attended State Normal High School in Albany, New York. She entered Mount Holyoke College in 1907 and majored in zoology and economics and earned a B.A. degree in 1911. From 1912-1914 she did office work. She married Lloyd Nash Robinson, an electrical engineer, on January 27, 1914. They had two children. Robinson was a housewife for much of her life, although in 1946 she did secretarial work for a medical society in Seattle, Washington. She also lived in California and Massachusetts. She died on November 14, 1964 in Seattle, Washington at the age of seventy-seven.