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Ban Righ Hall is the oldest of the University's residences still standing and owned by the university, and the first specifically built to be a residence.

In the early 1900s, Queen’s students didn’t live on campus. Residences didn’t yet exist, and so the university’s male students lived in nearby boarding houses. For Queen’s female students, though, there weren’t a lot of options, so they campaigned to purchase houses near campus where women could live together. They bought a number of houses, but demand for more grew each year and by the 1920s, Queen’s women wanted housing on a larger scale. The next campaign, then, was for an on-campus women’s residence to be built.

The Board of Trustees was skeptical, thinking it unlikely the women could fundraise the necessary capital, but when the women returned with the required $80,000, the Board approved the project. Construction soon began at the corner of University Avenue and Queen's Crescent.

The opening of the new residence in 1925 represented the culmination of about 15 years of work by the volunteer members of the Alumnae Association, the association of female Queen's graduates, who had entirely planned Ban Righ Hall and raised that $80,000 - more than half of the money needed for the building - through bit-by-bit fundraising in the form of teas, bake sales, bridge parties, and small donations.

A reluctant Board of Trustees provided the rest of the money; some Board members were worried that no women would want to live in Ban Righ because it was located on what was then the little-travelled, extreme southwest edge of campus, cut off from the focus of student life to the north and east.

In exchange for their contribution, the Alumnae fought for and won an ongoing share in the administration and supervision of the residence and later women's residences at Queen's, a role they kept until the early 1970s.

Ban Righ was officially opened in October of 1925 by the Viscountess Byng of Vimy, the wife of the Governor General. Adelaide Hall was added to it in 1951-2 and an expanded dining hall was added in 1967-68. The residence's dining hall was renovated in 1996 to accommodate growing numbers of students in residences, as well as to modernize food services at the University.

The term "ban righ" is Gaelic for "wife of the King" - or, in other words, "Queen." The name was suggested by Professor Macgillivray when the original name chosen by the alumnae, "Banrighinn Hall," was called into question because of the possibility of it being confused with a Mr. Brannigan, who was the owner of a local theatre.