Sally Gaucheron is an art historian and co-founder of Atelier de la Rose, which provides residencies for artists and writers. She met the artist Ed Herring (1945–2003) while teaching the art history programme on Art and Design as part of the Foundation Course at the East Ham College of Technology (later Newham Community College), which Herring had spent 20 years developing. They married in 1990 and moved to France the following year to establish the Atelier in the south-west of France.