Elizabeth Daryush (née Bridges) was born in December 1887, the daughter of the poet Robert Seymour Bridges (Poet Laureate 1913 to 1930) and Mary Monica Waterhouse. She grew up in the family home, Chilswell House, Boars Hill near Oxford.

Elizabeth published a translation of Persian poetry, Sonnets from Hafiz and Other Poems in 1921. She married Ali Akbar Daryush in 1923, a Persian government official (the couple met when he was a student in Oxford in 1915). The Daryushes lived in Persia until 1927, before returning to Oxfordshire and settling at Stockwell, Boars Hill.

Experimental in syllabic meter, over the years her poems reflected her increasing awareness of social injustice. Her first collection of poems was published in 1911 and titled in Greek script (translated as Charitessi). This was followed by Verses in 1916, a series which was resumed in 1932 with Verses II and continued on to Verses VII in 1971. A self Selected Poems of all the poems she wished 'to preserve' was published in 1972 (suppressing her three books published before 1922); her Collected Poems was published in 1976. Her work was championed by Yvor Winters, Roy Fuller, Donald Davie, Donald E. Stanford and, in later years, Michael Schmidt of the Carcanet Press.

Elizabeth Daryush died in April 1977 and is buried in St Peter's Church, Wootten near Oxford. Her estate was bequeathed to the Oxford Preservation Trust.