Born in Salem, Connecticut on May 29, 1870, Harriet Randall married architect Fred Lumis. In 1893, she began art studies in Springfield, Massachusetts. She first painted landscapes with Connecticut artist Leonard Ochtmen from whom she learned the tonalist style. She also studied with Parker Hayden at the New York Summer School in Cos Cob, Connecticut, and began in 1920 to study with Hugh Breckenridge at his School of Art in East Gloucester, Massachusetts.

In the 1930s, Carson, Pirie Scott and Company of Chicago handled her work and she moved away from her former heavy impasto technique to a more wash-like, broad application of color. In 1949 she invited other traditional artists, those standing firm for realism against the encroaching modernism, to found the Academic Artists Association. For the remained of her career, she taught private art lessons and remained true to the plein air method of painting. She died in Springfield, Massachusetts on April 6, 1953.