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Born in Johannesburg in 1960, grew up in an artistic family, parents involved in design and creation of ballet costumes and sets for Audrey King and the JHB Youth Ballet; mother an artist, paternal grandmother an illustrator and great aunt South African artist, Nerine Desmond. Amanda designed her first and only ballet sets at the age of four for the ballet Nursery Nonsense (Mother Goose Suite by Ravel) , attended art classes with Nina Campbell-Quine at her Johannesburg studio, went to the Waldorf School and then to The Johannesburg High School for Art, Ballet and Music where she matriculated with four distinctions.
Worked in advertising and held her first exhibition of drawings in 1979 at Gallery 709 in Cape Town. Studied Fine Art at Michaelis at the University of Cape Town, where she received twelve scholarships and was class medalist for three years in Cultural History of Western Europe; graduated in 1983 with a BA Fine Art with Distinction in History of Art.
She studied a Master of Arts in Fine Art, received eight scholarships and grants and graduated in 1988. Her dissertation was on contemporary black South African art. From 1984 to 1991 she worked as a lecturer at the University of Cape Town in the departments of Cultural History of Western Europe and History of Art, while continuing to paint in her spare time. She was an AA Life Vita Awards Theatre Judge from 1989 to 1991.
In 1992 she left academia wishing to combine an interest in art and plants by working in a horticultural environment. She studied landscaping and in 1995 graduated cum laude in Landscape Technology, receiving Best Student Prize, Merit Award and Best Landscape Student Award two years running. From 1995 to 2007 she working as a landscape designer in domestic and large scale landscaping projects in and around Cape Town.
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