Mayne was born in Brisbane, Colony of New South Wales in 1858. The area would become part of the Colony of Queensland in 1859. Mary Emelia Mayne was the second youngest of five children of Irish parents, Patrick Mayne, a butcher and grazier, and his wife Mary McIntosh Mayne. She attended All Hallows' School, a Catholic girls' school in Brisbane, until 1877.[1] Thereafter she oversaw and hostessed many functions at Moorlands, the family home at Auchenflower. She and her siblings all inherited real estate, giving them independent means. Neither she nor her siblings would marry.[1]
James and Mary Emelia Mayne became the principal benefactors of the University of Queensland giving it 280 hectares of land at Pinjarra Hills for agricultural education in 1923.[2] After negotiations beginning in 1926, they paid a further £63,000 to resume over 281 hectares at St Lucia. This site became the current University of Queensland campus.
Their wills demonstrate that James Mayne's estate was valued for probate at £113,334 and Emilia Mayne's at £83,375. Their chief assets were listed as the prestigious Brisbane Arcade, the Regent Building,[4] and Moorlands. Identical wills provided that the estates be applied in perpetuity for the university's medical school.
Siemon, Rosamond; Siemon, Rosamond (1997), The Mayne inheritance, University of Queensland Press; Portland, Or. : Distributed in the USA and Canada by International Specialized Book Services, ISBN978-0-7022-2934-3
Turner, Bernadette (1 August 2008), "The Portrait of James Mayne: A Short History", Queensland Review, 15 (2), University of Queensland Press: 81–87, doi:10.1017/S1321816600004797, ISSN1321-8166