Winifred Turner [also known as Winifred Paget] was born in Kensington, London, England on 13 March 1903 and was the daughter of the sculptor Alfred Turner (1874-1940). She studied at Central School of Arts & Crafts in London from 1921 to 1924 and, from 1924 to 1927, at the Royal Academy Schools in London, where she was awarded a first Landseer Prize of £30 and bronze medal for a model of a design, a first prize of £5 and silver medal for two models of a bust from the life, and a first prize of £30 and silver medal for a set of three models of a figure from the life, in 1925.

She exhibited at the Royal Academy in London from 1924 to 1962, the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts from 1931 to 1955, and the Society of Women Artists in London in 1939 and 1940. She also exhibited at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. In 1931 she participated in the 15th exhibition of the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society at the Royal Academy in London.

She was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors (ARBS) in 1930, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors (FRBS) in 1943. In 1943 she won the Lady Feodora Gleichen Fund prize. In 1933 the Chantry Bequest purchased her bronze statue Thought.

During the 1930s and early 1940s she taught at Central School of Arts & Crafts in London

Turner established her first studio at 44 Munster Road in Fulham, London in 1924. She relocated to to Studio K, 416 Fulham Road, London in 1932. Following the death of her father in 1940 she moved to Broom Cottage, Westdown Lane in Burwash Common, near Etchingham, East Sussex, and in 1942 married the coin and medal designer, Thomas Humphrey Paget (1893-1974). She died in Sussex on 30 October 1983

A major retrospective of her work and that of her father was held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 1988.