Alice Righter Edmiston (née Alice Laura Righter), painter, printmaker, and teacher, was born to Harriett and Dr. Frederick Butler Righter on 6 April 1874 in Monroe, Wisconsin. Her family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska when she was four-years-of-age. Edmiston attended the University of Nebraska where she studied art with Sarah W. Moore, and then furthered her studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students League in New York, as well as in Paris.

In 1893, Edmiston was a member of the faculty of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and was assistant to the head of the department, Cora Parker. She then taught at the Southwest Virginia Institute is Bristol, Virginia in 1984 and two years later at Galloway College in Searcy, Arkansas.  

Edmiston was a founding member of the Haydon Art Club in 1888, which later became the Nebraska Art Association and is now the Sheldon Art Association. She was represented by one of her pastels at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition in Omaha in 1898. In 1902, her work was exhibited in the first show of local artists at the Haydon Art Club. She showed at the Nebraska Art Association in 1912 and the Omaha Society of Fine Arts in 1923 where she won a prize. Edmiston was included in the Joslyn Art Museum’s Five States exhibition in 1934, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1940, and 1941. The Joslyn Museum mounted a solo exhibition that focused on her monotypes in 1931. She was honored at the Nebraska Art Association’s anniversary celebrations in 1938 and 1963,

Alice Righter married Arthur Edmiston on June 1, 1899. He was successful in the insurance business and they owned a summer home on Madeline Island, Wisconsin where she found inspiration for her paintings. She also spent time in the artist colony Provincetown as evidenced by her paintings and white-line color woodcuts.

She experimented with many media, including oil, watercolor, gouache, and egg tempera paintings; block prints; lithographs; and monotypes. The work of Alice Righter Edmiston is in the collections of the Museum of Nebraska Art; the Sheldon Museum of Art, and the Nebraska State Historical Society.

Alice Laura Righter Edmiston died on 29 March 1964 in Lincoln, Nebraska.