The daughter of a clergyman and a relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charlotte Emerson received an excellent education and showed a particular aptitude for languages. She taught school for a year in Montreal, traveled abroad, and in 1858 moved with her family to Rockford, Illinois. There she worked as a secretary, taught modern languages at Rockford Seminary (now Rockford College), and began to organize clubs, including Euterpe, a musical club.

In 1880 she married the Reverend William B. Brown, and after a three-year sojourn abroad, during which she continued her studies in languages and music, they settled in East Orange, New Jersey. She soon became president of the local Woman's Club. In 1889 at a meeting called by Sorosis, the New York women's club, the GFWC was organized. Brown was one of a committee of seven chosen to form the federation and was elected its first president. Under her presidency the membership grew rapidly from some 50 cultural clubs to several hundred, representing tens of thousands of members, and the formation of state federations, beginning with Maine's in 1892, went forward rapidly. She remained president until 1894.