Ellen Gates Starr was born near Laona, Illinois. Encouraged by her aunt, an art scholar, she enrolled in the Rockford Female Seminary, graduating in 1878. She then taught at a Chicago girls' school.

In 1888 Starr traveled with Jane Addams, whom she had met at the Rockford Female Seminary, to a London social settlement where educated young people worked toward social reform by living among the urban poor. In 1889, inspired by the London settlement, the two women founded Hull House in Chicago.

With Addams and other Hull House associates, Starr worked to reform child labor laws and help poor immigrant factory workers obtain better wages and working conditions. Starr lived at Hull House for almost 30 years, during which time she attempted to instill an appreciation for art and the creative impulse in the lives of the neighborhood's poor residents.

She strongly felt that working at an art or craft would result in "happier and more rational human beings" and could serve as an antidote to the demoralizing repetitiveness of daily factory work. In the early 1900s, Starr established a bookbindery at Hull House, where she taught bookbinding and established a reputation as a master craftsperson.

During the 1920s, however, Starr reluctantly came to believe that there was little place for handicrafts in the modern industrial world. In 1930 she retired to a Roman Catholic convent in Suffern, New York, and she died there, nearly in poverty.