Jean was born in Homer G. Hospital in The Ville of St. Louis, Missouri. She was graduated as valedictorian in 1961 from Charles Sumner High School and attended the University of Missouri at Columbia, Missouri, earning a BA degree in mathematical-statistics in 1966. She moved to New York City with her husband and son Von in 1972 and worked several years for the City University of New York (CUNY) and New York University as an IT project manager, systems analyst, and programmer, retiring in 2004. She earned an AS degree in Paralegal Studies in 2006, a MS degree in Management and Systems in 2012, and a Certificate in Career Coaching in 2014, the latter two from the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies. She studied at Parsons School of Design and FIT and briefly designed toddler dresses made to order. She was inspired by acting and drama studies at the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute to begin writing plays, and later attended the Frank Silvera Play-writing Workshop in Harlem where one, In the Cool of the Evening, was given a staged reading. Three of her plays are archived in the Schomburg Library in Harlem. She has been writing short stories since 1985. The trilogy of books, Tales from The Ville, consists of three books of short stories, self-published by her company JaVon Publishing, Inc. in 2018, 2019 and 2021. She is currently writing a novel on the fictional account of a family of freed slaves migrating north after the Civil war and soon fleeing and settling in St. Louis during the brutal ending of the Reconstruction Period.

Jean has attained Golden Soror status in the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., is the mother of one son, three grandchildren, and loves to knit, crochet and bake homemade apple pies.