Eileen O'Connor was born in Richmond, Melbourne, on 19 February 1892. At three she fell from the family pram and broke her spine; the damage, and the inflammation of the spinal cord that followed, left her in pain for the rest of her life. The family moved to Sydney, and after her father died in 1911 they turned for help to the parish priest of Coogee, Fr. Edward McGrath of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.
Together they founded Our Lady's Nurses for the Poor, which began on 15 April 1913 in a rented house in Coogee that became known as Our Lady's Home. Its nurses, in brown habits, went to the sick poor in their own homes and cared for them there — and Eileen, in constant pain, led them. By the account of her order she had seen Our Lady, who gave her a choice: to go to heaven, to live a normal healthy life, or to stay and offer her suffering for others; she chose the last.
Church authorities in Sydney turned against the work, alleging an improper relationship between the young foundress and the priest; McGrath was threatened with expulsion from his order and Eileen with excommunication. In 1915 the two of them went to Rome, where McGrath's appeal succeeded. She died at Coogee on 10 January 1921, aged twenty-eight.
She was buried at Randwick, and in December 1936 her coffin was moved to the chapel at Our Lady's Home. Her order says that her body was then found incorrupt, and adds that this has not been verified since; no medical report is published. Her cause opened in Sydney in 2020 and reached Rome in 2024.