Mary Anne Ferguson was born on July 25, 1918 in Charleston South Carolina. She lived in Asheville, North Carolina for her high school years, received her bachelor's and master's degrees from Duke University, and her Ph.D. from Ohio State University.

She was Professor Emerita of English at The University of Massachusetts Boston from 1966 to 1986 and chaired the English department. Ferguson helped found what is now UMass Boston's women's and gender studies department, one of the first in the country. She was one of the first professors to teach a literature course that highlighted representations of women in poetry, fiction, drama, and essays. By teaching courses that focused on women's writing and experiences, she helped establish women's studies scholarship not only in Boston, but in the United States. UMass's women's studies program began as a cluster of classes from departments including English, history, and philosophy, which coalesced into a concentrated major that focused on women's roles and the depiction of women in society. In 1973, Ferguson published "Images of Women in Literature," a pioneering work in Women's Studies that became the textbook for that course and many others like it. Ferguson also cared deeply about women's rights including wage inequality, maternity and child care issues, and women's ability to advance in the workplace.

Before UMass Boston, Ferguson taught at universities in New York City, Connecticut, Ohio, and North Carolina. She met Alfred Ferguson at the Yale University library and they married in 1948. In the late 1960s, Ferguson was a member of the Modern Language Association's Commission on the Status of Women. At age 47, she received a doctorate in medieval studies from Ohio State University. In 1990, Ferguson created and helped fund the Women's Studies Founders Award for Academic Excellence and Social Activism. She died on Thursday, April 9 at her home in Pittsburgh PA.