Margaret Kidder, painter, printmaker, and teacher, was born in Evanston, Illinois on February 5, 1904. After her graduation from Evanston High School, her family resettled in Southern California in 1921. She returned to Illinois to enroll in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she studied between 1922 and 1925. Among her instructors were Allen Philbrick and Matilda Vanderpoel.

In 1927 Kidder married Frederick G. Hertel and they moved to Pasadena, California where she taught at the Susan Stickney Memorial School of Fine Arts. While there, she met the artist and art critic Arthur Millier, who introduced Kidder to etching and engraving and frequently wrote about her work for the Los Angeles Times. Along with Millier and the artists Mildred Bryant Brooks, A. Simon, Jane McDuffle Thurston, and Martha Simmons, she formed The Six Print Club in 1932, which offered prints by subscription. She also studied with Millard Sheets in California, with whom she exhibited at the Madonna Festival in Los Angeles in 1950.

Kidder was a member of and exhibited with the California Society of Etchers. Her print Puppets was awarded the California Society of Etchers' prize in 1936. Kidder's work was also exhibited at the Stickney Hall in Pasadena in 1931; California Society of Printmakers in 1931; Zeitlin's bookshop in Los Angeles in 1931; Ebell Salon in Los Angeles in the years 1932, 1936, and 1941; Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1932 and 1941; Six Print Club in Los Angeles in 1932 and 1933; Palos Verdes Gallery in 1934; Hollywood Print Rooms in 1936 and 1941; Gump's, San Francisco (with Mildred Bryant Brooks), 1936; Foundation of Western Art in Los Angeles in 1937; Los Angeles County Fair in 1937; Chouinard Gallery in Los Angeles in 1938; New York World's Fair in 1939; Pottinger Gallery in Pasadena in 1940; Compton City Hall in 1941; Laguna Beach Art Association in 1944; Los Angeles Art Association in 1944 and 1945; Pasadena Society of Artists from 1940 through 1950; Art Institute of Chicago in 1947; and 29 Palms Artists Guild in 1954. A solo exhibition of Kidder's work was mounted at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena in February 1946.

Margaret Kidder's work is represented in the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Library of Congress, and the San Francisco Museums of Fine Art. She died in Pasadena in November 1959 and a memorial exhibition of her work was mounted at the Board of Equalization Building in Pasadena in July 1961.