Josephine Louise Le Monnier Newcomb was born on October 31, 1816 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. She was the youngest daughter of Alexander Louis and Mary Sophia (Waters) LeMonnier. Her mother was of English extraction and her father had emigrated to America from France. She lost her mother when very young and, being almost penniless, went to New Orleans to live with a married sister.
Newcomb received a large part if not all of her education in New Orleans.
Newcomb lived in retirement for a number of years, and then vainly sought relief in travel. Finally she decided to give her money to found a woman's college in memory of her beloved daughter, and she returned to New Orleans to make the necessary arrangements. The H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, in the Tulane University of Louisiana, for the higher education of white girls and young women, came into existence with her initial gift of $100, 000 to the Tulane educational fund on October 11, 1886. From that time until her death the welfare of the institution was her greatest personal interest. She made other gifts to it during her lifetime, and by her will, dated May 12, 1898, she made the university her residuary legatee, a bequest amounting to about $2, 700, 000.
Her gifts were by no means confined to Newcomb College; wherever she saw that money was needed she gave freely. During her lifetime she built a memorial chapel to Robert E. Lee at Lexington, Kentucky; she made gifts to the Confederate orphans' home at Charleston, South Carolina, and to a deaf mutes' school in New York City; and in the Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat Hospital of New Orleans she established a bed and named it after her daughter.
She died on Easter Sunday 1901 in New York City and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, New York.
Newcomb was small in stature, modest, and retiring, and would not allow her philanthropies to be extolled in her presence. She had a clear idea of the value and administration of wealth and under her care the fortune of about half a million dollars left by her husband grew to important proportions and provided abundant means for the charities of her long life.
Newcomb married Warren Newcomb, a man of New England ancestry then on a visit to New Orleans from Louisville, Kentucky, where he was a member of the firm of H. D. Newcomb & Brother, merchants. After their marriage they lived for a time in New York City, where they had a son, who died in infancy, and a daughter, Harriott Sophie, who was born on July 29, 1855. In 1866 Newcomb died, leaving his fortune to his widow and to their daughter, with whom she continued to live in New York until the child died on December 16, 1870. Already saddened by the death of her husband and her son and harassed by the efforts of her husband's relatives to set aside his will, this death of the last member of her immediate family was an unusually severe blow.
