The marriage produced eleven children. Elizabeth acted as hostess to visitors to her husband's property, Barwon Park near Winchelsea, and was a supporter of local churches and charities.

After Thomas's death in 1871, she used her inheritance to establish herself as a substantial philanthropist. Although, in her early donations, she had acted anonymously, by the end of the nineteenth century she was recognised as one of the colony's leading benefactors.
 
In the nineteenth-century tradition of philanthropy as both an obligation and an assertion of class, she would contribute to causes which she judged as being worthy of her assistance She continued to take a personal interest in the institutions which she had founded, visiting the Hospital for Incurables (later the Austin Hospital) in suburban Heidelberg and the Austin Homes for Women in Geelong on a regular basis.