Jean Ure was born in Surrey, and when growing up, knew that she was going to be a writer but she also wanted to be a ballet dancer.

She wrote her first novel when she was six years old which was about a little girl called Carol. Jean spent her teenage years writing and had her first book published when she was just sixteen - an event that prompted her to leave school the following year to continue writing. However she spent the next several years 'scrubbing floors, waiting at tables, selling groceries'. Jean also worked as a nurse and at the BBC before enrolling at the Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she met her husband. She worked for several years in Paris as a translator for DATO and UNESCO and wrote romantic novels.

Jean is a vegan and animal lover. She lives with her husband, seven dogs and two cats in a 300 year old house in Croydon.