Jean Hey was born and educated in South Africa. Before moving to America she worked as a journalist on two major newspapers in Johannesburg and Cape Town, and as a correspondent for The Times of London, reporting on Black education.

In the United States, her work has been published in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Plain Dealer, the Chicago Tribune, Solstice Literary Magazine, The MacGuffin, Arrowsmith Journal, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Jean has an MFA in fiction and nonfiction from Bennington College, where she received the Sven Birkerts Nonfiction Prize.