Believing that inherited money was a public trust, Miss Hogg became one of Houston's most generous benefactors. It was typical that she would want to share her great love of music with others. Precociously talented, Miss Hogg could play piano by the age of four and later studied music in New York and Berlin. A cosmopolitan woman who missed the rich culture that she enjoyed on her travels, she strived to establish a cultural community at home. In 1913 she became a founder of the Houston Symphony Society, serving several terms as its president.

Compassionate by nature and progressive in outlook, Miss Hogg was deeply concerned with the welfare of all Texans. Having fought her own battle with depression, she became a zealous proponent of mental health care. In 1929 Miss Hogg established the Child Guidance Center in Houston, the first organization of its kind in the nation. When her brother Will died in 1930, she used his estate to establish the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health and Hygiene at the University of Texas at Austin. Most of her own estate was also bequeathed to the foundation.

Although she never married or had children, Miss Hogg was committed to public education. In 1943 she was elected to the Houston School Board, where she profoundly improved the education of Houston's children. Many of her innovations were of fundamental and far-reaching importance, such as her insistence that African-American students receive art classes as did white students. Others were more subtle, such as her personal donation of a fireplace to a kindergarten classroom so that the children would feel at home.

Miss Hogg also worked to preserve the heritage of her family and her state. She restored the Varner Plantation as well as her parents' first home in Quitman, Texas. And, after restoring a number of Texas-German buildings in Winedale, Miss Hogg donated them to the University of Texas at Austin for use as a study center.

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