Freeman was born in Boston, Massachusetts, daughter of Peter Wilder Freeman and Frances Ann Dorr. After studying with Richard Saltonstall Greenough, she went to Italy under the aegis of Charlotte Cushman, and studied for one year in Florence with Hiram Powers. In 1862 she opened a studio in Rome, where she spent her professional life. She executed several bas-reliefs of Dante; a bust of Sandalphon; "The Sleeping Child"; "Thekla, or the Tangled Skein"; and several chimneypieces, one of which, "Children and the Yule Log and Fireside Spirits," was at the Centennial exhibition in Philadelphia (1876).