Lydia Boyd was born in Chowan County in about 1752. The daughter of a local planter and justice of the peace, Lydia married William Bennett, a wealthy planter and businessman sometime before 1774. The Bennetts resided in Edenton and also managed a large plantation in Chowan County.

In 1774 Lydia Bennett and her sister Marion Wells were two of the fifty-one women that signed a nonimportation agreement which later became known as the Edenton Tea Party Resolves. During the American Revolution Lydia Bennett continued to support the Patriot cause and her husband held office as a local justice of the peace and aided the Edenton militia.

After William Bennett died in 1801, Lydia assumed sole management of the Bennett plantation and the couple's several children until she died from influenza in Chowan County in October 1807.