Cynthia Beverley Tucker Washington Coleman was born to Nathaniel Beverley Tucker and Lucy A. Smith Tucker on January 18, 1832. She was the granddaughter of St. George Tucker. She married Henry Augustine Washington (professor of history and political economy at the College of William and Mary) in 1852. After his death in 1858, she married Dr. Charles Washington Coleman in 1861. Both marriages produced children, but the only children to survive into adulthood were her three sons and one daughter with Dr. Coleman: Charles, Jr., Beverley, George, and Elizabeth.

Coleman was one of the founders and incorporators of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, a charter member of the Society of Colonial Dames of America in Virginia, and an active participant in public works of historical nature. She died on October 24, 1908 and is buried with her second husband in the Bruton Parish Churchyard.