Amy Brown attended high school at Brigham Young Academy (BYA).] For part of her time at BYA, Brown lived in the home of Karl G. and Anna Meith Maeser. It was at the Academy she met Richard Lyman, her future husband who would become an LDS Church apostle in 1918.
Brown and Lyman's plans to marry were postponed because the University of Michigan did not allow married students and that was where Lyman was studying. Brown worked as a teacher at BYA from 1888 to 1894. Brown and Lyman's marriage in 1896 in the Salt Lake Temple was performed by Joseph F. Smith. After their marriage, Richard Lyman studied at Cornell University and the University of Chicago. While in Chicago, Amy Lyman became involved in Settlement House programs and associated with Jane Addams.
Prior to the Second World War, Lyman accompanied her husband to England where he presided over the church's European Mission.