Born in the United Kingdom but raised on Sydney's lower North Shore, Jane Abbott is a self-proclaimed gypsy and advocate for environmental and humanitarian issue. She has been a jillaroo, nurse, secretary, short-time teacher, office administrator and at one stage pursued a career in marketing. Her second novel, Watershed, was written in 2013. It received a Commendation in the 2014 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, and secured Abbott a place in the Australian Capital Territory's Writers' Hardcopy Professional Development Program for Australian Writers (Fiction Edition). It was through this program that she met her future literary agent.
Abbott mostly divides her time between Melbourne and central Victoria.