On September 17, 1900, the Sisters of Saint Dominic welcomed their first pupils to Sacred Heart Academy.

Sister M. Albertina Selhuber was the first principal. Other instructors were Sisters M. Benedicta O'Rourke, M. Adelaide McCue, M. Sylvester Maus and M. Borromeo Donley.

The charter students were Florence Kennedy, Vera Shanahan, Katherine Flanigan, Sadie Kennedy, S. Conlon, Maybelle Lynch, Lucille Shanahan and Esther Keating. Later that fall, the school admitted two boarders, Gertrude Fleming and Ethel Assay.

The sisters were invited to attend the Jewish services by a rabbi of a neighboring temple (Temple Emanuel) but they politely declined.

The Matter Estate on the corner of Ransom Avenue and Fountain Street had been purchased a year earlier to establish a Day and Boarding for girls. By the end of the first year, an annex had been added to the building due to the large number of applicants.

The school gave diplomas in three areas of curriculum: 1) Classical-Scientific, 2) Classical, and 3) Domestic Sciences. Music, elocution and drama played a part in the education at the Academy.

In 1906, the high school was accredited by the University of Michigan and affiliated with Trinity College in Washington, D. C. In 1910 the Sisters of St. Dominic legally incorporated the Novitiate Normal School, the first collegiate designation for the Academy, because the young Sisters needed college certification in order to teach.

In 1912, the adjoining property to the south was purchased, as enrollment continued to expand.

Not long before she died, Mother Aquinata wrote in her Notebook of Foundations: During the short space of 17 years, there have been nigh unto one hundred students who have graduated with high honors from this noble institution. Due to the steady increase of boarders and students, the Dominican Sisters have purchased the magnificent property of Charles Fox on East Fulton Street to erect eventually their Motherhouse, to which will be attached a boarding school and college.

In 1922, the school moved to the west wind of the new Dominican Motherhouse at Marywood, and became known as Sacred Heart College and Academy. Among the class of 1922 was Cecile M. Ronan, class president and Alice Whalen who wrote a memorial to the original school.