Author, Painter. Frank Millet received recognition as a multi-talented man. Not only was he an American author working as a war correspondent, but he was an artist painting oil-on-canvas as well as murals. Accompanying his surgeon father to the Civil War, Millet served as a Union Army drummer boy to a Massachusetts regiment and later served as a surgical assistant. As a brilliant student at Harvard University, he received a master's degree in language and literature. He became a reporter, then city editor, of the "Boston Courier." From a pastime of lithography and portraiture of friends, he decided to devote himself to art. Entering the Royal Academy of Fine Arts at Antwerp in Belgium, he was the recipient of an unprecedented silver medal in his first year and a gold medal in the second. An adventurous traveler, Millet kept his newspaper contacts open, and during the Russian-Turkish War he represented as an American war coorspondent with distinction several American and English newspapers. He was decorated by Russia and Rumania for bravery under fire and services to the wounded. Millet's literary talents led him to publish accounts of his travels and, besides writing short stories and essays, he translated Tolstoy's "Sebastopol." Millet's work as a decorative artist includes the murals of the Baltimore Customs House, Trinity Church of Boston, and the Capitol Buildings of Wisconsin and Minnesota. His paintings are found in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, and the Tate Gallery in London. In addition, his administrative skills, awarded him acclaim as superintendent of decoration at the 1893 World's Colombian Exhibition in Chicago, and as organizer of the American Federation of the Arts for the National Academy.

Millet died in the sinking of the "RMS Titanic" on April 15, 1912, while returning from a trip to Europe with his companion, Maj. Archibald Butt. Millet's body was later recovered by the cable boat "Mackay-Bennett" and returned to East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where he was buried in Central Cemetery. He and Butt share a common cenotaph, the Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain, near the White House.

In 2019, Millet's 1878 painting "Le Pacificateurs a san-Stephano" sold at auction at Christie's for $60,000.