Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell was born in 1961 in Maisons-Laffitte, Île-de-France, France. She is the daughter of British media proprietor Robert Maxwell and French-born researcher of the Holocaust, Elisabeth Maxwell. In the 1980s she attended Balliol College, Oxford, and became a prominent member of London's social scene. She worked for her father until his death in 1991; she then moved to New York City, where she continued living as a socialite and had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.