After the war, Lowry and her family moved to Tokyo, Japan, where her father was stationed from 1948 to 1950. Lowry went through junior high school at a school for the children of military families, The American School in Japan, and returned to the United States to attend high school. Lowry and her family briefly lived in Carlisle again in 1950 before moving to Governors Island, New York, where Lowry attended Curtis High School, on Staten Island. She began attending Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights, New York, in 1952, and she graduated in 1954 before she attended Pembroke College, the now-defunct women's branch of Brown University.