Heminges was baptised at St Peter de Witton Church, Droitwich, Worcestershire, on 25 November 1566. Sent to London at the age of twelve, he was apprenticed for nine years to the City Grocer John Collins, becoming a freeman of the Grocers' Company on 24 April 1587. On 10 March 1588 he received a licence to marry Rebecca Knell (née Edwards), the widow of William Knell, an actor with the Queen's Men who had been killed at Thame, Oxfordshire, in 1587 by John Towne, a fellow actor. Heminges and his sixteen-year-old wife settled in the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury, and had at least thirteen children there between the years 1590 and 1613.