Ashbrooke began her acting career in England.[4] She was a dancer with the Gaiety Company in London as a young woman.[3] She acted on the New York stage and toured in plays in North America, with credits in The Twelve Temptations (1889),[5]The Ice King (1890),[6]McKenna's Flirtation (1892),[7][8]Dolly Varden (1893),[9]Blue Grass (1894),[10]When London Sleeps (1896),[10]An Irish Gentleman (1897),[10]A Young Wife (1900),[11][12]Why Women Sin (1903),[13]Her Mad Marriage (1904),[14] and At the Old Cross Roads (1908).[15] The Omaha Bee described Ashbrooke in 1890, as "a much stronger woman than you usually see in farces" with a "handsome figure, a well modulated voice, and an art which shows a most excellent school."[16]
Ashbrooke described herself as a widow when she married actor and circus clown Tote Du Crow in 1889;[2][23] they separated in 1904, and divorced in 1909.[24][25] She died in 1934, in Los Angeles, probably in her seventies.[26]
^In the 1930 United States federal census (via Ancestry), Florence Ashbrooke listed her birthplace as "East Indies" and both her parents' birthplaces as England. She also described herself as a naturalized American citizen, an actress, age 60, and widowed, living as a roomer in Los Angeles. In the 1925 New York state census (via Ancestry), Florence Ashbrooke described herself as 55, 35 years in the United States, and born in "Umbalo", which may mean Ambala, India (the city was called "Umballa" by Kipling, among other Anglophone versions of the name).
^ abWhen she married George T. Ducrow in 1889, she gave the name Eleanor Lugannagh, and said that she was married once before and a widow; also that she was born April 13, 1864, in England. Pennsylvania U. S. Marriages, Allegheny County, 1889, via Ancestry.