Lucy Barnard Briggs was born in 1903 in Harlem, New York to Therina Townsend and Everett Larkin Barnard. She graduated from Smith College in 1925. In 1928 she married career diplomat Ellis O. Briggs, and over the years was posted with him to Chile, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Korea, Peru and Uruguay. The couple had two children, Lucy Therina (1930-1994) and Everett Ellis (b.1934). Briggs was active in the Korean War Widows Committee, a self-help project, when her husband was U.S. Ambassador to Korea in the early 1950s; she was given the Order of Merit for this work by Korean President Rhee prior to her departure in 1955.