Clarice Cliff (née Machin) took in washing to supplement the family income, and they had seven children. Cliff was sent to a different school from her siblings, and this perhaps prompted her more independent approach to her career, and her non-standard life style by Stoke-on-Trent standards. After school Cliff would visit an aunt who was a hand painters at a local pottery company, and she also made models from papier-mâché at school. At the age of 13, Cliff started working in the pottery industry. Her first work was as a gilder, adding gold lines on ware of traditional design. Once she had
Clarice Assad 1993, Clarice and her younger brother Rodrigo Assad moved to France to live with their father, in a home he shared with his second wife and their child Julia. Clarice studied piano and improvisation privately with Natalie Fortin, a professor from Le Conservatoire national Supérieur de Paris, and benefited also from her father's mentorship, composing and arranging numerous pieces. This was a prolific period, though short lived amidst a turbulent time. Mr. Assad's wife, who had been battling cancer, died a year later at 38. Clarice returned to Brazil with her brother. In Rio de Janeiro, between 1995-1997, Assad acted