Artist and poet Alice Foster Tilden was born on September 10, 1875 in Brookline, Boston, Massachusetts to architect George T. and Alice Olmstead Butler Tilden. Her brother Charles Joseph Tilden became a noted engineer in Boston. Alice and her sister, Edith Selina Tilden, lived in the family home in Milton, Massachusetts. Tilden studied at the school of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston with William Merritt Chase, and in 1906 she exhibited her portrait paintings at the Milton Historical Society.

In 1907, while living in Milton, Massachusetts she traveled to Europe for further study with Lucien Simon in Paris. In 1915, she registered via copyright Listening, a sculpted bust of a young woman, and in 1918, she copyrighted Voice in the Wilderness, a sculpted bust of symbolic youth. Her poem, The Atheist, was published 20 October 1904 in the Christian Register and ten years later her poem Bellerophon to Pegasus was published in the Christian Register on 19 March 1914.

In 19I6 she had a show of her poetry at the Historical Society, and that same year her work was included in the Fourteenth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture by Prominent Artists at the Poland Spring Art Gallery, Maine State Building, in South Poland, Maine. In 1921 she had an exhibit of her paintings at the White Gate Coffee House in Bridgewater, New Jersey. By 1940 she was living in Boston, MA.

Tilden was a member of the Rockport Art Association, the North Shore Arts Association and the Copley Society of Boston. She exhibited with the Copley Society, Boston Art Club, Rockport Art Association, North Shore Arts Association, National League of American Penwomen, and at the Speed Memorial Museum, Louisville. She won three prizes for two etchings and one water color at the League of American Penwomen, and her work is represented in several private collections.

Alice Foster Tilden died on December 25, 1956 in Milton, Norfolk, Massachusetts.