Irma L. Stephens was born in Pratt, Kansas, on March 22, 1947, the daughter of Vernon Vuell (1907-1992) and Vesta Mae (Coleman) Stephens (1913-1997). Vernon and Vesta Stephens were both from Oklahoma, where Vesta had been a beauty salon operator and Vernon worked for the Chicago Rock Island and Pacific Railway Company as a brakeman. After moving to Kansas sometime after 1940, Vernon Stephens continued as a brakeman, now for the Rock Island Railroad.

After graduating from Pratt High School in 1965, Irma began attending the University of Kansas. She earned her bachelors of arts in liberal arts in 1969, her masters in English literature in 1972, a bachelors of science in education in 1974, and her juris doctorate in 1979. Throughout and in between her academic coursework, she worked as a reporter and photographer at the Pratt Tribune, taught freshman and sophomore composition and upper level literature courses at KU and at Lawrence High School, was a technical writer for the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America headquartered in Lawrence, KS, was an associate editor of Squire Publications in Prairie Village, KS, and held editorial and staff positions for the University of Kansas Law Review, as well as serving as a legal researcher for Association of Systematics Collections and as instructor for Environmental Law (an undergraduate environmental studies course) and with the Clinic on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO).

Irma Russell won several awards during this period of her life as well, including a Scripps-Howard Journalism Award, Minneapolis Tribuine Award, Kansas Press Association Award, and a Phi Beta Phi Education Foundation Award. As a law student she won first place in the Alan Y. Cole Writing Award and the Schneider, Shamberg, and May Writing Award for the Best Law Review Note.

From 1980 to 1981, Russell clerked for the Honorable James K. Logan in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Thereafter she was in private practice in both Kansas City, Missouri, and Memphis, Tennessee, focused on commercial litigation and transaction. She worked at Hillix, Brewer, Hoffhaus, and Whittaker; Burch Porter and Johnson; and Glankler, Brown, Gilliland, Chase, Robinson, and Raines.

While still in the KCMO area, Russell was an instructor and co-director of Legal Writing for the KU Law School. After moving to Memphis, TN in 1984, she held visiting assistant professorships at the University of Memphis from 1986-1989 and 1992-1993 until accepting a full-time assistant professorship there in 1993. She was promoted to associate professor in 1998 and continued teaching at Memphis until 2006.

From 2006-2009, Russell was a law professor with the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma before being appointed dean of the University of Montana School of Law from 2009-2014. In 2015 she moved back to the Kansas City area to join the University of Missouri-Kansas City's faculty as the Edward A. Smith/Missouri Chair in Law, the Constitution, and Society.

Irma Stephens married Thomas Lyon Russell, Jr. (1946 - ) in 1967. They have two children, Nathaniel and Anna.

[Information retrieved from census records, faculty websites, and findagrave.com.]