Jeanne Mazure's father, Englishman Richards Woods, RN, was transferred for a term of duty to the Australian Navy. During this time he married Marie Mazure, and they were stationed in Melbourne when Jeanne was born. They returned to South Australia when she was two months old and moved to England when she was three years old. Jeanne returned to Australia at the age of twenty. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours in Psychology (1969) and an Associate Diploma in Arts: Media and Theatre Writing (1987). She has lived in America, Lismore, Canberra, Sydney, England and Ernabella but has lived more years in Adelaide than anywhere else. She married Clarence Daws in 1949 and later married Ernest Roberts. She was twice widowed.
She has worked in many jobs, including as a barmaid, a typist, a tutor in Psychology (University of Adelaide), a therapist, an adult educator of indigenous people, a volunteer psychological consultant for American Indian alcohol clinics in Rapid City (S. Dakota) and Dallas (Texas), a tutor, coach and lecturer (University of SA and Aboriginal Task Force) of urban Aboriginal students and an actor. Mazure performed with three other women - Mary Vincent, Paula Carter and Bridget Walters - in 1967 at the Elizabeth Repertory Theatre in Adelaide. The four have remained firm friends and all participated in the 2002 Adelaide Fringe Festival. Carter directed Kaos Unlimited's production of Mazure's comedy, 'The Naked Truth', at the Promethean Theatre.
Mazure's main work is as a playwright, although she has also written in other genres and, in 1998, she was writing a detective novel, an "epic" play and a children's pantomime. She has published poetry in a Native American journal (1981), travel articles in the Advertiser, and articles in various psychological journals. She has run a number of workshops, mostly therapy, and has been an amateur actor since 1967. She wrote three street theatre plays for the Aboriginal Task Force, South Australian Institute of Technology: 'Aboriginal Adoption' (1978), 'Land Rights' (1981) and 'Aboriginal Education"'(1989). Mazure chaired the South Australian Writers' Theatre in 1993/4 and was on the Board of the Writers' Centre 1995. In 1998 she and Sandra Saunders, an Aboriginal neighbour, founded an Alliance Against Racism.
