Joy Adamson was born as Friederike Victoria Gessner on January 20, 1910. She was a renowned naturalist, artist, and author. Adamson is best known for her book Born Free, which describes her experiences raising a lion cub named Elsa. This book was printed in several languages and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning movie of the same name. In 1977, she was honored with the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art.

Joy was born to Victor and Traute Gessner in Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic) and was the second of three girls. Her father was a wealthy architect. Following the divorce of her parents, Joy lived with her grandmother. In her autobiography The Searching Spirit, Adamson wrote about her grandmother, saying, "It is to her I owe anything that may be good in me."