Judith Astria Merkle Riley was born on January 14, 1942, in Brunswick, Maine, and grew up in Livermore, California, U.S.A. Her great-grandfather was a Swiss emigrant who moved to the United States in 1860. Her uncle was the famous baseball player Fred Merkle. Her father, Theodore Charles Merkle, was a controller of the Project Pluto, and her brother Ralph C. Merkle is a professor of technology in a Computer Science School.

Judith Merkle Riley held a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and taught in the Department of Government at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. She was married to Mr. Riley and wrote under the name Judith Merkle Riley, authoring six historical and romance novels.