She was born in New Castle, Indiana in 1877, the daughter of architect William S. Kaufman. She studied first under her father"s instruction and then under John Elwood Bundy at Earlham College, under Frank Duveneck and Lewis Henry Meakin at the Art Academy of Cincinnati (where she received a scholarship in 1904) and with the Overbeck Sisters in Cambridge City, Indiana.
She also studied with J. Ottis Adams at the Hermitage in Brookville, Indiana. Eggemeyer was a versatile painter and is best known for her oil paintings of backyard gardens and of still life scenes. She also painted in Provincetown, Massachusetts where the Eggemeyers had a summer home.
Elmer took his own life in 1931 and she stopped painting about that time.
Today her paintings are held in a number of private collections and museums, including the Richmond Art Museum, Indiana State Museum and the Louise and Alan Sellars Collection of Art by American Women in Indianapolis. She is buried in the family plot at Earlham Cemetery in Richmond, Indiana.
