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Worth, born Jennifer Lee in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, was raised in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. After leaving school at the age of 15[1] she learned shorthand and typing[2] and became the secretary to the head of Dr Challoner's Grammar School. She then trained as a nurse at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, and moved to London to receive training to become a midwife.[1]

Lee was hired as a staff nurse at the London Hospital in Whitechapel in the early 1950s. With the Sisters of St John the Divine, an Anglican community of nuns, she worked to aid the poor.[1] She was then a ward sister at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in Bloomsbury, and later at the Marie Curie Hospital in Hampstead.[3]

She married the artist Philip Worth in 1963, and they had two daughters.[2] Worth retired from nursing in 1973 to pursue her musical interests. In 1974, she received a licentiate of the London College of Music, where she taught piano and singing. She obtained a fellowship in 1984. She performed as a soloist and with choirs throughout Britain and Europe. She later began writing, and her first volume of memoirs, Call the Midwife, was published in 2002. The book became a bestseller when it was reissued in 2007. Shadows of the Workhouse (2005; reissued 2008) and Farewell to the East End (2009) also became bestsellers.[1] The trilogy sold almost a million copies in the UK alone.[3] In a fourth volume of memoirs In the Midst of Life, published in 2010, Worth reflects on her later experiences caring for the terminally ill.

1. Call the Midwife (2002)
2. Shadows of the Workhouse (2005)
3. Farewell to the East End (2009)
4. In the Midst of Life (2010)