Mary Ann Griffiths emigrated from London with her two sons in 1850. She was housekeeper for Stephen Muller and his four children, and married him in 1851. He was a surgeon who held important public offices, and she became acquainted with many influential political figures, some of whom were sympathetic to her innovative and far-sighted views about the independence and rights of women. Others, including her rigidly conservative husband, strongly disapproved. Mary Ann Muller found a way to promote women’s issues and social issues generally by using the power of the pen and she contributed columns to the Nelson Evening Mail, using the pseudonym “Femina”.

One pamphlet, An Appeal to the Men of New Zealand, setting out the logic of giving women an equal voice in all affairs of state, was praised by the English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill. She wrote that women’s “grasp and power of mind is ‘cribbed, cabined and confined’ to one narrow groove” and called for New Zealand to take the initiative in freeing women from prejudice and condescension, and enabling them to share in the arts of government. Her writing was influential in initiating the Married Women’s Property protection legislation, and helped to develop a climate of support for women’s rights in the minds of many women and men, but not until her husband’s death in 1898 was her identity publicly revealed.