She attended Bedales School, which she left with a single A level in Art. She enrolled at the Camberwell School of Art. She also studied art at the Royal Academy Schools. After her studies there, she took a two-year sabbatical to travel with her father to India, where he was employed to photograph the production of "A Passage to India". The film's producer, John Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne, gave her a job as an intern, assisting the wardrobe department (without credit) and studying wood gilding under her father's cousin Thomas Messel. Returning to England, she enrolled at Middlesex Polytechnic (renamed as Middlesex University since 1992).