Hunter was born in Howard, Pennsylvania, to Michael Howard, an insurance salesman, and Laura Tipton. After her mother’s death, Hunter and her older brother, Harold, moved in with her aunt and uncle Frances and Edward McEntire in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, when she was 5 or 6 years old.

Her love of drawing and art began when she was three years old; whenever she visited her grandmother, Hunter drew figures on the wallpaper in the stairway, apparently finding the wallpaper boring and unimpressive. Hunter remarked in an interview that “drawing is a perfectly natural thing, for the first impulse is to express one’s self, and the easiest way for a child to do this is by pictures.” She painted her first artwork in the 6th grade at Transeau Elementary School. Titled “We Bark for Transeau,” the piece depicted three puppies in a basket. Puppies would become her favorite subject. While attending Williamsport High School, Hunter illustrated for the school’s Cherry and White publication and played “unimpressive basketball,” according to herself. In 1914, during her senior year, Hunter received first prize in a Williamsport Civic Club essay contest about her three favorite artworks at a James V. Brown Library art exhibition. The judges agreed that she best interpreted the artists’ meaning of the paintings.

After graduation, Hunter studied illustration under Thornton Oakley at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. She then attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial. While studying in Philadelphia, Hunter was hired by John Wanamaker to illustrate a line of children’s fashion for catalogs and advertisements. She was paid $500. While illustrating in the children’s fashion industry, Hunter was sent the actual clothes in order to paint the necessary details of the garment accurately. She moved back to Williamsport for about six years, before returning to Philadelphia. While in Williamsport for the 1956 Sesquicentennial, Hunter was named one of the first Pennsylvania ambassadors by the state Chamber of Commerce, and was named “A Distinguished Daughter of Williamsport.”

With an artistic style similar to Norman Rockwell’s, Hunter’s watercolors delightfully captured nature at its best. Her favorite subject was children and their pets. Due to her talent and the characters she created, Hunter became the “most popular and best-selling calendar artist” of the 1940-50s.” Her memorable subjects were “welcome therapy to millions recovering from the dreariness of WWII.” In the early 1920s, Hunter created a series of paper dolls that first appeared in Ladies’ Home Journal. After rave reviews and requests, she illustrated six dolls to appear in the regular publications. From the 1930s to the 1940s, Hunter contributed 18 covers to the Saturday Evening Post.

In 1946, Hunter was approached by John Baurngarth to do a series of paintings depicting the everyday problems of a little boy and his dog. The series, “Sandy in Trouble,” continued for 11 years, as Hunter created an annual painting to add to the series. During her lifetime, she illustrated and published two books, Random House’s Boo, Who Used to Be Scared of the Dark, and The Frances Tipton Hunter Picture Book. Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin published The Picture Book, which featured Hunter’s illustrations and verses/stories by Marjorie Barrows. She was listed in the Who’s Who in American Art from 1936 to 1956 and was a member of the Society of Illustrators. The Pennsylvania State University, University of Minnesota, James V. Brown Library in Williamsport, and the Thomas T. Taber Museum of the Lycoming County Historical Society all own artworks by Hunter.

After a year long illness, Frances Tipton Hunter died on March 3, 1957, at the Philadelphia Jefferson Hospital. She is buried in Howard, Pennsylvania.

One of its managing editors was writer Theodore Dreiser, who worked with other members of the staff such as Sarah Field Splint (later known for writing cookbooks ) and Arthur Sullivant Hoffman.  The novelist and short story writer, Honoré Willsie Morrow served as editor, 1914–19.

The Delineator featured the Butterick sewing patterns and provided an in-depth look at the fashion of the day. Butterick also produced quarterly catalogs of fashion patterns in the 1920s and early 1930s.

In addition to clothing patterns, the magazine published photos and drawings of embroidery and needlework that could be used to adorn both clothing and items for the home. It also included articles on all forms of home decor. It also published fiction, including many short stories by L. Frank Baum.

The magazine also published articles on social and political reform. Charles Dwyer, editor from 1894-1906, expanded the magazine's coverage to include editorials, fiction, and women's increasing involvement in public life. His successor, Theodore Dreiser published articles addressing women's roles as consumers, and invited readers to write in about current social problems.

In the late 1920s, it featured covers by noted fashion artist Helen Dryden.

It ceased publication in 1937 when it was merged with The Pictorial Review.

In May 1894 the magazine began a monthly series on "Women's Colleges" with a piece on Vassar. Published by graduates of those colleges, the series covered locations, academics, traditions and costs. After the first year, the series' focus shifted to women's experiences at co-ed schools, starting with Cornell University and expanding to other land-grant universities.

From 1907-1911, the magazine published the Child-Rescue Campaign, in which readers could write to the magazine to adopt children whose photographs and stories were serialized in each issue. Over two thousand institutionalized children of white working-class and/or European immigrant parents were placed in private homes during the campaign. It eventually resulted in the 1909 White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children, hosted by President Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1921 the Better Homes in America campaign was launched by editor Marie Mattingly Maloney to celebrate home ownership, modernization, and beautification. In 1923 it became a national campaign, with support from President Calvin Coolidge and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.