Jeanne Hines was born on 1922 in West Virginia. She grew up in a preservative family, but she dreamed about doing something more than to marry and to be a housewife. She wrote while she traveled with her husband between their five mansions distributed on the East Coast.

She wrote gothic novels as her real name and romance novels as Valerie Sherwood and Rosamond Royal. She won the Romantic Times 1987-1988 Career Achievement Award in the category of "historical adventure".