Born in London in 1936, Flavia Ormond was taken to Canada when her father went missing in northern France in 1940. Returning to England in 1959, she explored Europe and the Near East before attending The Courtauld Institute of Art and embracing her life-long passion for Italian Renaissance painting. She and her husband brought their children up in Rome in the 1970s, and later established a company dealing in Old Master Drawings, exhibiting in London, Paris and New York.