Virginia was the daughter of Judge Nathan William Norton and his wife Carrie Virginia Roleson Norton, both buried in Forest City. Virginia studied Classical Piano in the United States and Canada and Became an accomplished Pianist at a young age. She married first Norman Judson Copping on the 28th of February 1914 in Forest City, Arkansas. On May the 7th 1915 both of Norman's parents were lost in the sinking of the Lusitania and both Norman and Virginia became active in the association formed to remember those lost on the Lusitania. tragically Norman died of Pneumonia in 1921. They had two children Cynthia Dana Copping Crookston and Virginia Norton Copping Wilson Johnston, they are both buried with their mother. Through the Lusitania Association Virginia had become close friends with Sir Albert Edward Kemp who also lost a grandson on the Lusitania. After the death of his first wife Sir Edward married Virginia on the 3rd of March 1925. They had one daughter Katherine Edward Kemp Hanley Cross who is also buried with her mother.
Virginia, Lady Kemp, continued the many charitable works she began before her marriage to Sir Edward, supporting the Canadian Forces through World War II as a member of the executive committee of Canadian Troops in Training, including the Toronto Regiment, now the Royal Regiment of Canada. She became a particular patroness of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and was president of their Women's Auxiliary from 1934 through 1945. She was a vice president in 1939 and elected president of CNIB in 1954 through her illness in June of 1957. She donated Toronto's Barker Hall for those Blind from World War II. Lady Kemp also was patroness of the arts, donating the scholarship that began Canada's Glenn Gould, and she was Benefactor Member of the Art Gallery of Toronto from 1932, among many other organizations and associations.
Lady Kemp was many things to the people she had associations with but to her children and grandchildren she was as loved and adored, as she loved and cherished them.