Mary Robinson was the third and youngest child of Rev William Robinson and Mary Richardson Robinson. In 1796 she married Samuel Egerton Brydges, who had purchased and rebuilt Denton Court in Kent, the house where she had passed her childhood; his first wife had died only six weeks before, and he already had five children. They had ten children together but five predeceased her. She followed her husband when he went into exile to avoid imprisonment for debt, and spent many years with him in Geneva, Switzerland. She survived him by seven years and returned to England, dying in penury in Herne Bay in Kent.