Emma Cole was born in Midland, Ohio in 1845 and, as a child, moved to Kent County, Michigan. She attended Vergennes Township schools and her father, Andrew Cole, owned and farmed property in the township. She later attended school in Lowell and ended up going to high school in Grand Rapids. After high school she cared for her ill mother and got a job teaching at a district school, saving her earnings for college. She attended Cornell University for two years but had to leave early due to her mother's death.

After her mother's death, she returned to Grand Rapids where she taught for twenty-six years at Central High School, retiring in 1907. At first she taught English and history, but, as other students and teachers observed, she was not very good at teaching these subjects, and lessons were often seen as dull. Once given the opportunity to teach botany, a subject she had loved since childhood, she flourished, sharing her passion for flowers with her students.

During this time, she also developed her botany expertise through extensive traveling and study. She traveled to Europe where she visited famous gardens. She also spent time in Florida, Cuba, Mexico and California, a state in which she traveled extensively and collected many specimens. Locally, she spent six years in the 1890s gathering material for her book on Grand Rapids plants, Grand Rapids Flora : a catalogue of the flowering plants and ferns, growing without cultivation in the vicinity of Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was published in 1901. Along with this book, she wrote another scientific publication and lectured at the Kent Scientific Institute, a significant feat for a woman during the early 1900s.

Emma Cole died of typhoid fever in San Antonio, Texas in 1910, believed to be on April 25. Her body was taken back to Michigan, where she was buried at Bailey cemetery in Vergennes Township. As part of her will, she left three funds: a fellowship in botany at University of Michigan which is still used today to fund student summer research projects in botany, a trust fund of $1500 with the Board of Education of Grand Rapids, with the interest to be used to buy botany equipment for Central High School, and the Emma J. Cole Flower Fund. This flower fund was designated to eight downtown churches, who took turns using the money for a special flower service to be held every June and October. The collection, ranging from 1912 to 1967, includes copies of the sermons from the flower services, along with accompanying church pamphlets when available.