Florence Olajide was born in London to Nigerian parents. She spent the first six years of her life privately fostered by a white family before moving to Nigeria with her birth family. As an adult, she moved with her own family back to London, where she continued her career in teaching, becoming first, the headteacher of an inner London primary school and later, one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools.

Florence’s memoir, Coconut detailing the challenges of growing up labelled ‘Òyìnbó’ (white) in her Black extended family, was published by Thread Books in 2021. Her first historical fiction novel, The Stolen Daughter, set in the 1880s Yorubaland (in present day southwest Nigeria) at the dawn of colonisation, was published by Bookouture in 2024. Florence lives in Kent with her husband.