Elizabeth Jane Agnew was born on July 25, 1871, in Princeton, Kansas. She earned a bachelor of science in home economics from Kansas State University in 1900, where she taught from 1900 to 1903. She then attended Columbia University where she earned a graduate degree in 1905. She served as chairman of the home economics department at Wichita High School from 1905 to 1910 when she was hired to organize and lead the new home economics department at the Western Branch of the Kansas Normal School (later Fort Hays Kansas State Normal School).

From 1918 to 1919, she took leave to serve voluntarily as a dietician at the Army Hospital at Camp Travis near San Antonio Texas. In 1919 upon her return to the Fort Hays Kansas State Normal School (later Fort Hays Kansas State College), she was appointed the first Dean of Women and served in that capacity until her retirement in 1943. In 1955, the Kansas Board of Regents, acting upon the recommendation of Fort Hays President M. C. Cunningham, named the new women’s dormitory Agnew Hall in her honor. Agnew Hall is the first building at Fort Hays named after a woman.

Agnew was active in numerous professional, civic, and scholarstic organizations. She helped organize a chapter of American Association of University Women in Hays. She was also a member of the National Association of Deans, Pi Gamma Mu, Phi Kappa Phi, Delta Kappa Gamma, Kansas Council of Women, Kansas Historical Society, and the National Federated Study Club. Elizabethe J. Agnew died in Newton, Kanas, on February 8, 1961.