Virginia Howes was born and lives in Kent. Following the births of her four children, she decided to train to become a midwife.

Having completed her training and spent a number of years working in hospitals, she left the NHS and became an independent midwife in 2000, setting up the Kent Midwifery Practice with her friend Kay in 2003. She is on the board of Independent Midwives UK and is a vocal campaigner for them. She believes passionately in the right for all women to choose a birth that is treated as a normal physiological part of life, rather than a medical emergency.

She shares her time between Ashford in Kent, where she lives with her partner Sean and youngest daughter, and the family home in Turkey. All four of her own children are now grown-up and she is grandmother to four boys and a girl, all of whom she has delivered herself at home.