Jean Kennedy Smith was born Jean Ann Kennedy on February 20, 1928 in Brookline, Massachusetts, the eighth of the nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Jean was the shyest and most guarded of the Kennedy children. Her mother would say of her youngest daughter, "She was born so late, that she only was able to enjoy the tragedies, and not the triumphs." She would go on to attend Manhattanville College, a Sacred Heart school, where should would meet and befriend two future sisters-in-law: Ethel Skakel, who would marry her brother Robert in 1950, and Virginia Joan Bennett, who would marry her baby brother Edward in 1958. She herself would be married on May 19, 1955 in the small chapel of St. Patrick's Cathedral to Stephen Edward Smith , a businessman who helped run the Cleary Brothers Company, the family boat and shipping business. He would, in time, not only take over the Kennedy families' finances, he would also become a political advisor and campaign manager for the Kennedy brothers. (He would become the Undersecretary of the Treasury under President Kennedy).

The Smiths would maintain a lower profile than the other Kennedy's, preferring to stay out of the glare of the spotlight. During the early 1960s, they would permanently settle in New York City. Jean would have two sons, Stephen Jr. (b. 1957) and William Kennedy (b. 1960), and eventually adopt two daughters: Amanda Mary (b. 1967) and Kym Maria (b. 1972) who was actually born in Vietnam during the war.

Jean managed to stay just out of the camera lens until the 1990s when she and her family were forced into the spotlight. First, her husband Steve died after a brief battle with cancer on August 19, 1990. The next year, her son William, who was a medical student at Northwestern University Medical School , was accused of rape in Florida (he was acquitted). Then in 1993, she was appointed by President Bill Clinton as the American Ambassador to Ireland, continuing a legacy of diplomacy begun by her father who was the Ambassador to the Court of St. James during the Roosevelt administration. She played a pivotal role in the peace process in that region for almost five years before resigning the post.

Since then, Ambassador Smith has founded the Very Special Arts, a nonprofit organization which promotes the artistic talents of mentally and physically challenged children. She also sits on the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Today, she commutes between New York City and Washington D.C.