Mary Renault was born Mary Challans in London on September 4, 1905. She was the first of two daughters of Frank Challans, a physician, and Clementine Mary Baxter Challans. She attended boarding school and studied English at St. Hugh's College, Oxford.

Instead of undertaking the teaching career she had prepared for, she took a clerical job but soon returned to Oxford, this time to Radcliffe Infirmary, to study nursing. Her first published novel.

Promise of Love (1939; published as Purposes of Love in Britain), earned sufficient royalties to allow her to write full time. When England entered World War II, she returned to nursing but continued to write. At the end of the war, Renault traveled in Europe, the Mediterranean countries (particularly Greece and the Aegean Islands), and Africa. In 1948 she moved to South Africa, where she lived for the remainder of her life.

Before this move...