The College of Family Life, and its predecessors, Home Economics and Domestic Science, was among the original disciplines offered when the Utah Agricultural College opened in 1890. The Department of Domestic Arts was one of the first established department at the institution, eventually becoming the School of Domestic Sciences and Arts in 1903. The UAC 1903-1904 General Catalogue said the School of Domestic Sciences and Arts aimed to “train and broaden the minds of women and to enable them to meet more intelligently the home demands of modern life”.

By 1913, the college was home to the Departments of Food and Dietetics, of Home Construction and Sanitation, and of Domestic Arts. The school would eventually offer one of the first courses in the United States on the nutrition, education, physiology, and psychology of early childhood development, also called “mothercraft”. The success of the “mothercraft” courses eventually led to the creation of the Department of Child Development and Parental Education and the Child Development Lab in 1931. Known now as the Adele and Dale Young Child Development lab, the Child Development Lab operates under the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services and continues to provide childcare services and research and training opportunities for students.

In 1957, when the UAC became Utah State University (USU), the School of Home Economics, became the College of Family Life. During its operation, the College of Family Life included the Departments of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Human Environments, and Family and Human Development. When the College of Family Life was closed in the early 2000s, the departments were consolidated within the Colleges of Education, Agriculture, and Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.