Olivia was born in Hooker, Oklahoma, the older of two children of John C. and Anna Emma Oblander Harder. She graduated from Enterprise Academy, now Great Plains Academy, Academy in 1927* and then attended Union College, where she studied music. She began teaching music at Sheyenne River Academy, Now Dakota Adventist Academy, in the mid-1930s, while also serving as girls' dean. She left there to teach at Laurelwood Academy in Oregon in 1941.

Three years later she returned to the Midwest, where she taught at Maplewood Academy in Minnesota until 1946. She then returned to Union College to complete her music degree while teaching piano at the college part-time. At the end of that school year's summer session, when she completed her degree with honors, she taught full-time at Union College Academy, overseeing piano and voice instruction and directing the choir, responsibilities she would hold until 1950.

She accepted a position as piano and organ teacher at Auburn Academy in Washington that year and would teach there until 1955, when she went to Upper Columbia Academy. In 1962 she was hired to teach at Rio Lindo Academy, a newly opened school in Northern California.

In 1966 she moved to Berrien Springs, Michigan, where she ended her career working as a library assistant for the next ten years at Andrews University. She retired in College Place, Washington, and was living there with her brother, Frederick E.J. Harder, and his family when she died, at age 93.

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