Pauline Sara Jo Moyes, known professionally as Jojo Moyes, was born on 4 August 1969 in Maidstone, Kent, England, UK, and grew up in London. She is the only child of Elizabeth J. McKee and James C. Moyes. Moyes studied at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Bedford New College, London University.

Moyes lives on a farmhouse in Great Sampford, Essex, with her husband, journalist Charles Arthur, and their three children. Her career has been diverse, including roles such as a minicab controller, a typer of braille statements for the blind for NatWest, and a brochure writer for Club 18-30. After completing her education, she won a bursary financed by The Independent newspaper to attend the postgraduate newspaper journalism course at City University. Apart from a year spent working in Hong Kong for the Sunday Morning Post in 1994, she was associated with The Independent for ten years, serving as Assistant News Editor and Arts and Media Correspondent.

Moyes has been a full-time novelist since 2002, when her first book, Sheltering Rain, was published. She is one of the few authors to have twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association and her works have been translated into twenty-eight languages and have sold over 40 million copies worldwide. Moyes is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and screenwriter, celebrated for her contribution to romance literature.