Owen was born in
Portsmouth, Hampshire, into a Roman Catholic family. Her parents were Mary Kathleen (née Hitchiner), a
Royal Navy dockyard worker, and Peter Ronald Owen, chief petty officer in the Royal Navy, and was the younger of two daughters. Her sister is Jill Beatrice Owen. Owen's first marriage (other sources simply say "relationship") started when she was a teenager in the 1970s, producing her first child, Sarah, in late December 1979, when Owen was an 18-year-old university student. She married actor
Keith Allen in 1984, and they had two children together, pop singer
Lily Allen and actor
Alfie Allen, before divorcing in 1989. She is married to art director Aaron Batterham. In 2017, the
National Portrait Gallery acquired an early portrait of Owen for their permanent collection by photographer
David Gwinnutt. ==Career==