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. In 2012, Maxwell founded a non-profit group for the protection of oceans. In July 2020, Maxwell was arrested and charged by the federal government of the United States with the crimes of enticement of minors and sex trafficking of underage girls, related to her association with Jeffrey Epstein. In December 2021, she was convicted on five out of six counts