Sandra Lynn Cox, known by her pen name Sandra Brown, was born on March 12, 1948, in Waco, Texas, and raised in Ft. Worth. As the oldest of five daughters, Sandra was a responsible and mature girl, often choosing to read a book rather than play with dolls. This responsible nature stayed with her as she graduated from Texas Christian University with a degree in English. She worked as a contributing feature reporter at the nationally syndicated PM Magazine in Dallas, but after the show experienced mass layoffs, she found herself out of work.

Sandra married Michael Brown, a former television anchorman and award-winning documentarian, and returned to Ft. Worth. Together they had two children, Rachel and Ryan. Although she continued working as a showroom model, her husband encouraged her to explore fiction writing while their children were at school. Within a year, Sandra sold her first novel, Love's Encore, under the name Rachel Ryan, a pseudonym derived from her children's names. She went on to produce a succession of books for six different publishers, writing under pen names including Laura Jordan and Erin St. Claire.

Since the publication of her first novel in 1981, Sandra has written over seventy novels. Her books have sold more than eighty million copies worldwide and have been translated into over thirty languages. Brown has achieved major success on the New York Times Bestseller list, with every novel since 1990 appearing on the list. In 1992, her novel French Silk was adapted into an ABC-TV movie.