In the course of her marriage, Lillian Gilbreth bore twelve children. That did not prevent her, however, from obtaining a doctorate in industrial psychology. Nor did it stop her from taking an active part in the consulting business started by her husband Frank, a pioneer in efficiency engineering. While her husband lived, Gilbreth played a behind-the-scenes role in the couple's business. But with his death in 1924, she took it over. Despite male distrust of her competence to deal with productivity problems, Gilbreth survived. By the 1930s she was the country's leading authority in applying workplace efficiency to home management. Among Gilbreth's most lasting achievements were her efforts—begun originally with her husband-to devise ways for the physically handicapped to lead more independent lives.

Gilbreth herself did not buy this portrait after posing for it around 1930, but her daughter Ernestine asked the artist to keep it until she could afford it. That time came in the late 1940s, when Ernestine purchased the picture with royalties from Cheaper by the Dozen, the best-selling memoir that she and her brother had written about life with their efficiency-expert parents.