 As a child, Jane Richard helped her mother maintain Kailzie Gardens and aspired to become a champion figure-skater, practising for the Scottish Junior Championships at Murrayfield Ice Rink.She quit when she was 13 and was enrolled at Cobham Hall in Kent.At the age of 16, Jane Ruchard met the 17-year-old Lord Ralph Percy at his cousin's birthday party, and later followed him to Oxford, where he attended the University of Oxford, and she took a secretarial course.