Alice Theresa Hildagarde Swanson was born on November 8, 1904. She graduated from Bates College in 1925 with an A.B. degree. She then moved to New York to pursue a career in the performing arts. She studied singing, worked as a model for the Art Students League, and worked as an actress with the newly formed Group Theater, under the direction of Lee Strasberg and Harold Clurman, and with the Provincetown Players, an avant-garde theater. In the mid-1930s, Alice Swanson married William C. Esty, founder of the William Esty Advertising Agency. She continued her interest in the arts, and began to commission works by many noted composers, poets, and visual artists. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, she spent considerable time in Paris, where she befriended many important artists. Between 1955 and 1969, she regularly commissioned musical compositions and then performed them in major recital halls, including Town Hall and Carnegie Hall. In 1994 and 1995, Mrs. Esty donated the scores for twenty-six of these commissioned works to the college, including ten compositions which were commissioned as an homage to Francis Poulenc and performed by Alice Esty at a Carnegie Hall recital in 1964. She died on July 21, 2000.