Painter, printmaker, writer and educator Elizabth O'Neill Verner was born Elizabeth Quale O'Neill in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 21, 1883. Her first formal art education was with the painter and printmaker Alice Ravenel Huger Smith who would later become known as a founder of the "Charleston Renaissance". After graduating from high school in 1900, Elizabeth enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, studying under Thomas Anschutz. 

After a hiatus in which she taught art in nearby Aiken, she entered the workshops of artists Gabrielle D. Clements and Ellen Day Hale, both of whom encouraged her to pursue printmaking. Elizabeth soon co-founded the Charleston Etchers Club and the Southern States Art League. She married E. Pettigrew Verner in 1907, and they had two children.

Though she was a prolific artist and exhibited with the art societies she helped found, she did not pursue a professional art career her husband's death in 1925 left her the sole provider for her family. With the support and advice of her first mentor, Alice Smith, she began working as an illustrator, both publishing her own Charleston-themed etchings geared toward tourists and seeking out commissions. Among these was a commission by the Savanah Historical Society to capture the houses and other landmarks they were aiming to preserve. This was followed by the Williamsburg Historic District, Princeton University, Harvard Medical School, the University of South Carolina, the US Military Academy, and more. In addition to these more traditional projects, Elizabeth would become known for her portraits of African Americans, particularly the flower vendors of downtown Charleston. She was also a book illustrator, contributing to DuBose Heyward's Porgy. 

When she became financially stable, she began traveling abroad to further her art studies. She took courses at the Central School of Art in London in 1930, and seven years later traveled to Kyoto, Japan to learn the art of sumi painting. An exhibition of pastels by the artist Laura Coombs Hills inspired Elizabeth to take up the medium, and eventually developed a technique for oil pastels on raw silk mounted to a wood support. She also traveled to Mexico, the Carribean, and once more in Europe. In 1946 she published a book titled Other Places, featuring illustrations of places she had traveled along with her commentary.

Elizabeth O'Neill Verner died in South Carolina on April 17, 1979. 

Her work can be found in the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, the Charleston Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Delaware Art Museum, and more. The Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Governor's Award for the Arts is awarded every year in her honor.