Frederike Viktoria Gessner was born in Troppau, Austria, in 1910 and studied music and sculpture in Vienna before emigrating to Kenya. She visited Kenya first in 1937 as the wife of Victor Von Klarwill and returned in 1938 to marry Peter Bally, a Swiss botanist then working at the Coryndon Museum. While accompanying him on a three-month expedition to explore the Chyulu Hills, she began sketching the plants he collected and, with his encouragement, became a highly skilled botanical illustrator. She produced some 700 watercolours and illustrated a number of botanical books.

During the Second World War, on one of her visits to the Provincial Commissioner of the Northern Frontier Province and his wife, Joy Bally met George Adamson, a Game Warden, whom she married in 1943. George Adamson continued to serve as a Game Warden for nearly twenty years and for much of this period his work was concentrated in the northern part of the Northern Frontier Province where Joy Adamson painted and collected insects, fossils, small reptiles, and rodents for the Coryndon Museum. She also continued to receive commissions to paint flowers. By the late 1940s, she had begun to paint people as well, and in 1949 she signed a contract with the government to paint the peoples of Kenya in their traditional dress and ornaments as a record for permanent deposit in the Museum. There, she received advice and support from Louis Leakey, whom she had known since her early years in Kenya. Over the next seven years, she produced a collection of some 500 paintings. The district Administration assisted by organising local people to sit for portraits, and usually she would spend around two days with each model, painting and recording details about the ornaments worn. Toward the end of this period, in 1955, she visited South Island (Hohnel Island) in Lake Rudolf with her husband, an expedition that the Administration did not consider safe for a woman, particularly as two British scientists had died on a previous attempt at exploration in the 1930s. She also visited and photographed rock art sites near Lake Rudolf.

At about this time, George Adamson was required to shoot a lioness that had killed a man, and he brought her three cubs home to his wife, who had already reared many small animals. Two of these lions were eventually sent to the Rotterdam Zoo, but one, Elsa, was moved to a remote area of Meru, where the Adamsons continued to visit her. Joy Adamson wrote a book about Elsa from her notes: Born Free, which captured the world's imagination and was ultimately translated into many languages. Two other books about lions, Living Free and Forever Free, followed, and 'Born Free' and 'Living Free' were produced as feature films. 'Born Free' was also produced as an American weekly television series, the rights for which were acquired internationally.

In 1961, George Adamson resigned as Game Warden, but continued to rehabilitate lions, including three used in the filming of 'Born Free'. Later, his wife's work with cheetahs and leopards necessitated that their camps be some distance apart. He continued to devote himself to work with lions for the rest of his life.

By the early 1960s, Joy Adamson had committed herself to the cause of the conservation of wild animals. At the time of Kenya's independence, she was much concerned about the future of the country's game reserves and parks and made a great effort to raise money from foundations and individuals for their support; she was particularly involved in the creation of the Meru Game Reserve. The Elsa Wild Animal Appeal Trust, constituted by Trust Deed in England in Nov 1963, was established to raise money to support these efforts. More explicitly, its object was to promote research into wildlife and its conservation, conserve wildlife in East Africa and elsewhere, transport wild animals in Africa to game reserves where their continued existence was threatened, and prevent cruelty to wildlife in Kenya and other parts of Africa. In addition to the money raised, Joy Adamson contributed a large portion of her film royalties to the Trust.

Through the Trust, she was able to make a major contribution to wildlife conservation in Kenya. Initially concerned with providing assistance to game reserves and parks, it donated funds for staffing, road making, buildings, maintenance, vehicles, boundary demarcation, fencing, and land acquisition. It assisted greatly in the effort to establish a national park at Hell's Gate, Naivasha, and, in addition to many smaller wildlife research and conservation projects, it made substantial contributions to the establishment and operation of the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya. Similar trusts were established in the United States (1969) and Canada (1971), while in Kenya a local company, Elsa Ltd., directed by Joy Adamson, received income from the sale of her books and paid dividends to the Elsa Trust, which held a major interest and which could make discretionary grants for wildlife conservation.

From this period onward, the firm of Gill and Johnson, Chartered Accountants, and in particular Peter Johnson, was to play an important role in the development of Joy Adamson's activities. In his various capacities, as partner in the firm, Chairman of the Elsa Trust Advisory Committee, and a Director of Elsa Ltd., Peter Johnson acted as a focal point and helped to coordinate her many interests. The increasing importance of his role as an adviser and friend is reflected in her Gill and Johnson files (Micr. Afr. 580/3, items 11-13 and Micr. Afr. 580/4).

Even as her general conservation activities widened, Joy Adamson become more deeply involved in animal research. During the filming of 'Born Free' in 1964, a King's African Rifles (KAR) Army Officer, Major B.H. Dunkie, offered her a young female cheetah that had been found abandoned as a cub in the Northern Frontier Province near Najir. When the filming was over in May 1965, she took the cheetah, Pippa, to Meru Game Reserve, which became a national park the following year. Camping there, she followed Pippa's movements daily over an area of about five miles for the next five yours, during which time Pippa bore four litters. Joy Adamson wrote two books based on this work, Spotted Spinx and Pippa's Challenge.

In 1969, the National Parks decided that animal rehabilitation within the Meru Park boundaries was no longer feasible with the increased number of visitors to the park, and at about the same time Pippa died. Joy Adamson, who now wished to rehabilitate a leopard from cub stage to maturity in a wild state to provide a comparative study to her lion and cheetah work, spent the next several years at her property 'Elsamere' on Lake Naivasha, trying to locate a site for this work and a leopard cub. In this period, she wrote her autobiography, The Searching Spirit, studied the Verreaux's eagle owls and colobus monkeys on the property, and corresponded with scientists about cheetah behaviour. Finally, she was able to find and raise a leopard cub, Penny, and in Aug 1977, she was granted permission to rehabilitate it in the Shaba Game Reserve. There, she spent the last three years of her life observing Penny's behaviour, upon which she based Penny Queen of Shaba. Joy Adamson was murdered in Jan 1980, near her camp in the Shaba Reserve.