Mary O’Hara was born in 1935 in Sligo, Ireland, to John and Mai (Kirwan) O'Hara. She was the youngest of four siblings: Joan, Angela (who was raised by her paternal grandmother), and Dermot. Her family was Catholic, and faith played an important role throughout O'Hara's life.

O’Hara sang with her family from an early age and competed in the annual Easter Sligo Feis Ceóil, winning her first Children’s Cup at age 8. She attended Sion Hill boarding school, Dublin, from age 13. In 1951, Sion Hill hired harp teacher Máirín Ní Shéa to prepare several students, including O’Hara, for a pageant dedicated to the works of Thomas Moore. O’Hara continued to study singing and harp and performed on Radio Eireann before graduating in 1952.

In the early 1950s, O’Hara had a solo show on Radio Eireann performing Gaelic songs accompanied by harp and performed with the Radio Eireann Light Orchestra and on variety shows. In 1955, she played at the Edinburgh International Festival of the Arts between sets of the Trinity College Players and was invited to guest star the following year. In 1956 O’Hara signed her own BBC-TV London Saturday Night series, “The Starlight Series”; released an EP and a recorded a full-length album,Songs of Erin (Decca, 1957); and married American poet Richard Selig, who she met through Thomas Kinsella.

O’Hara and Selig moved to New York City, where O’Hara recorded Love Songs of Ireland in the summer of 1957 (Decca, 1958). Selig died of Hodgkin’s disease that fall. O’Hara recorded Songs of Ireland (Tradition, 1958), weeks after his death. She returned to Ireland, and although she had determined to join a monastery, she continued performing, including participating in a charity tour in Australia and New Zealand in 1959.

In 1960 O’Hara began researching contemplative orders in earnest, and in 1962 she entered Stanbrook Abbey, a Benedictine order in York, England, where she remained as a nun for twelve years. Just before entering the Abbey, she recorded fifty-four songs that would later be released as Mary O’Hara’s Ireland (1973), Mary O’Hara’s Scotland (1974), and Mary O’Hara’s Monday, Tuesday - Songs for Children (1977). O’Hara was professed a Benedictine nun after her third year, and in her eighth year returned to playing the harp as part of her monastic practice. In 1974, she recorded her repertoire of “God-songs” as Mary O’Hara: Recital, with the first side of the album dedicated to secular love songs, including a setting of one of her Selig’s poems. O’Hara had suffered recurring health problems in the monestary and decided to leave the order that year.

O’Hara settled in the London area and relaunched her performance career. Padraig (Pat) O’Toole, who she met at church, helped promote her until she signed a professional manager in 1977. O’Hara bought a home in Plastow Green, Hampshire, England that she named Rivendell Cottage. She and O’Toole married in 1985.

During the second phase of her career, O’Hara released eighteen albums, hosted a series of radio and television programs, including BBC’s “Mary O’Hara and Friends," and wrote several books, among them her first autobiography, The Scent of the Roses (1980).

O’Hara retired from performing and recording again in 1994. From 1996 to 2002 she and O'Toole resided in first in Nairobi, Kenya and then Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where he taught journalism.

After returning to England, O’Hara put together a talk and accompanying songbook for the 2005 World Harp Congress in Dublin. She toured for several years using these materials, and self-published five songbook volumes with accompanying recordings as “Mary O’Hara: Travels With My Harp” between 2007-2009. This work also led her to revise and update her autobiography, which she republished, also under the title Travels With My Harp (Shepheard-Walwyn Ltd.), in 2012.

After 2012, O’Hara and O’Toole sold Rivendell Cottage and divided their time between Inis Mor, in the Aran Islands in Ireland and La Carihuela, Spain. Pat O’Toole died in 2015. In 2016 O’Hara was honored with the Achill International Harp Festival and Harp Ireland-Fóram Cruite na hÉireann joint lifetime achievement award for her “outstanding career and promotion of the Irish harp around the world.”

Sources

“Mary O’Hara.” Wikipedia. Accessed September 9, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_O'Hara.

Mary O’Hara official website. Accessed September 9, 2013. http://www.maryohara.co.uk/.

O'Hara, Mary. The Scent of the Roses. London: Michael Joseph, 1980.

_____. Travels With My Harp. London: Shepheard-Walwyn Ltd., 2012.

Jean and Flip Heitz were neighbors of Mary O'Hara and Padraig O'Toole in Plastow Green, Near Newbury, Berkshire, England. In her autobiography, O'Hara describes Jean Heitz simply as "my Dutch friend." By the time O'Hara and O'Toole were corresponding from East Africa, Flip had died, Jean had returned to the Netherlands, and her correspondence was facilitated by her daughter Elizabeth Kasprowicz-Heitz and son-in-law John Kasprowicz.