Yevonde Philone Cumbers was born on 5th January 1893 in Streatham. She was the eldest of two daughters, and with Verena, her younger sister, the family moved to Bromley in 1899. She was initially educated by a governess and a local day school, then at the liberal and progressive Lingholt Boarding School in Hindhead and subsequently at the Guilde Internationale in Paris, as well as boarding schools in Belgium and France. From an early age Yevonde Cumbers displayed an independent attitude. Her heroine was women's liberationist Mary Wollstonecraft, and she joined the Suffragette movement in 1910.
