Born in Paris, she was educated at Sorbonne University before she moved to London in 1959, where she trained as a nurse at Hammersmith Hospital. She married Gordon Slynn in 1962. She taught French at the University of Buckingham from 1980 until 2000 and became an honorary graduate of the university in 2003. When her husband was appointed a law lord and conferred a life peerage in 1992, she became Baroness Slynn of Hadley.
