Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell was born in 1961 in Maisons-Laffitte, Île-de-France, France. She was born two days before a car accident that left her 15-year-old brother Michael in a prolonged coma until his death in 1967. She attended Balliol College, Oxford, in the 1980s and became a prominent member of London's social scene. In 1991 she moved to New York City, where she continued living as a socialite and had a relationship with financier Jeffrey Epstein. She founded a non-profit group for the protection of oceans in 2012.