 Owen was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, to Mary Kathleen (née Hitchiner), a Royal Navy dockyard worker, and Peter Ronald Owen, chief petty officer in the Royal Navy, and was the younger of two daughters.Her sister is Jill Beatrice Owen (born 1959).Owen's first marriage (other sources simply say "relationship") started when she was a teenager in the 1970s, producing her first child, Sarah Owen, near Christmas 1979, while Owen was an 18-year-old university student.