Fenella Greig Heckscher's interest in biology began with the study of wildflowers as a child in England. She went on to study zoology at Oxford University, and then practiced medicine in New York. From there, she and her husband, Morrison Heckscher, moved to a historic house in New York's Hudson Valley, which offered a landscape of wildflowers waiting to be explored, as well as opportunities to meet new gardening friends. She learned of Jane Colden and her Botanic Manuscript at a meeting of the Garden Club of America, and became fascinated by Colden's descriptions of plants native to the United States. Since her retirement from medical practice, she has devoted much of her time to the study of Jane Colden's contributions to the American botanical Enlightenment.