Sarah Purser was born in Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) in County Dublin, and raised in Dungarvan, County Waterford. She was educated in Switzerland and afterwards studied at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin, and in Paris at the Académie Julian. She worked mostly as a portraitist. She was also associated with the stained glass movement, founding a stained glass workshop, An Túr Gloine, in 1903. Some of her stained glass work was commissioned from as far afield as New York, including a window at Christ Church, Pelham dedicated to the memory of Katharine Temple Emmet and Richard Stockton Emmet, grandson of the Irish patriot, Thomas Addis Emmet. In 1923 she became the first female member of the Royal Hibernian Academy.