Lena Edwards was born in Washington, DC, on September 17, 1900.

She began her medical career in community practice, in 1924, after graduating from Howard University's College of Medicine.

Her reputation in obstetrics was the result of her skill at deliveries during home births, as hospital births in Washington, DC were unavailable to blacks at the time.

In 1931 Edwards was appointed to the first medical staff of the Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital in New Jersey.

In1948 she passed the oral examination of the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Although she was rebuffed by the medical establishment in her still-segregated hometown of Washington, DC, by the time she was forty-eight she had become one of the first African American women to be certified in her specialty.

For three decades, in part because of Edwards, the Hague Hospital was among the leading clinical centers in the country, renowned for its research on the hypertensive conditions of pregnancy.

A devout Roman Catholic, Edwards subsidized the founding of Our Lady of Guadeloupe Maternity Clinic in Hereford, Texas. There, she provided the medical services to migrant workers for which President Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 1984, the medical alumni association of Howard University honored her as a "Living Legend."