Hilary Eppley grew up in rural central Pa (read: cows and mountains) and got her undergraduate degree in Chemistry at Franklin & Marshall College, a small private liberal arts college in Lancaster, PA. She co-authored 4 scientific papers as an undergraduate and earned a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. After some brief waffling between going to graduate school in geochemistry or inorganic chemistry, she decided to attend Indiana University and earned a Ph. D. in Inorganic Chemistry under the direction of George Christou (who has since moved to the University of Florida). Her work involved the synthesis and characterization of large aggregates of manganese ions. She then earned a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship and worked with Jeffrey Zaleski at Indiana University on the synthesis and design of photoactivated DNA-cleaving agents. She started at DePauw in 1999. Her research and teaching related activities have earned grants from Research Corporation, the Petroleum Research Fund, and the National Science Foundation. She has had over 20 undergraduate research students since starting at DePauw.

She met her husband, Dave Murray, at one of those silly freshman orientation exercises in college (back in the dark ages). They live in Avon with their two cats, Enkidu and Pandora. Along the way they've picked up mutual interests in good food and wine, hiking, bicycling, supporting local trail initiatives, and looking at and buying contemporary art.