Glenna Maxey (later Goodacre) was on August 28, 1939 in Lubbock, Texas. She studied art at Colorado Collage, where she met her first husband William Goodacre, and returned to her hometown of Lubbock upon graduating in 1961. Initially focusing on painting, Glenna shifted her medium to sculpture in 1974 and moved her family to Boulder, Colorado, before making one final move to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1983 following her divorce from first husband William. Over the course of her nearly 50 year career, Glenna sculpted over 600 pieces, including the Vietnam Women's Memorial installed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 1993. Her other most well-known works include the 2002 Irish Memorial in Penn's Landing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the image of Sacagawea on the U.S. Dollar coins first minted in 2000, and a life-size statue of President Ronald Reagan sculpted in 1998 for both the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City and the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Glenna passed away on April 13, 2020 at the age of 90.

The Vietnam Women's Memorial Project (VWMP) was established in 1984 when plans for placing a statue specifically to commemorate the estimated 11,500 American women who served in Vietnam began. On June 15, 1988, the U.S Senate approved the addition of a dedicated "woman's statue", originally to be placed within Arlington National Cemetery. In 1990, the VWMP sponsored a nationwide competition to choose a final design for the statue, but the competition jury was ultimately split in their voting, so in September 1991 the United States Commission of Fine Arts voted for a new design by sculptor Glenna Goodacre. Landscape architect George Dickie chose the final site for the statue, located 300 feet south of the Vietnam Memorial on Washington, D.C.'s National Mall, and installation was finalized in 1993.