 Born to Jewish parents Simon and Phyllis (Hepker) Lakofski, Denise Lakofski had the vision from the time she was five years old that she would be an architect.Pursuing this goal, she spent her summers working with architects, and from 1948 to 1952, after attending Kingsmead College, studied in South Africa at the University of the Witwatersrand.She briefly entered liberal politics, but was frustrated by the lack of acceptance of women in the field.