Murphy was born in Ohio on June 16, 1928, and relocated to California in 1956, placing herself at the center of the country's postwar hot rod and drag racing culture. Her path into competitive driving was unconventional — she pursued high-performance vehicles at a time when women participants in organized motorsport were exceptional rarities, and she systematically sought out the categories most resistant to female entry.
Murphy's career was built on accumulating firsts. She became the first woman licensed to drive a nitromethane-fueled car, a distinction earned within the National Hot Rod Association's technical licensing framework, which was among the most demanding in drag racing. She also became the first woman to hold a fuel funny car license from the NHRA, clearing the regulatory and safety hurdles that governed the fastest purpose-built drag vehicles of her era.
Beyond drag racing, Murphy became the first woman to drive a jet-engined car on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, the symbolic center of land speed record attempts. She additionally set the women's land speed record and the NASCAR women's speed record, the latter demonstrating her range across different competitive disciplines.
Her Indy car experience was singular: as of 1975 she remained the only woman ever permitted to drive an Indianapolis-specification car at race speed on the track itself, an occasion that took place in 1963 in a Studebaker-badged car equipped with a Novi engine. The Novi was among the most exotic and technically advanced powerplants of the period, associated with the front-engined roadster era of American oval racing.
Murphy set several long-distance speed records across American geography during this period, including records on the Mexico to Canada route and the New York to Los Angeles cross-country corridor, disciplines that tested endurance, navigation, and sustained high-speed driving over public and closed roads.
Murphy's public visibility extended beyond the track. She appeared as a guest on the December 1, 1963 episode of the American television game show What's My Line?, where she was introduced in the role of test car driver — reflecting both her professional identity and the novelty her career represented to mainstream audiences of the time. Her work as a demonstration and test driver connected her to the automotive industry more broadly, not only to competition.
Murphy was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2017, a recognition that placed her alongside the figures who shaped American motorsport's development. Her career demonstrated that the exclusion of women from top-level motorsport in the mid-twentieth century was a policy choice rather than a performance limitation: Murphy consistently met the technical and safety licensing requirements of each discipline she entered and produced record-setting performances where opportunities were granted.
She died on December 21, 2023, at the age of 95, having lived to see women compete at the highest levels of drag racing and international circuit racing in ways that her generation's pioneers had made harder to refuse.