Jean Tren-Hwa ("Spring Flower") Perkins was born in a dirt-floor hut near the Yangtze River in Hubei province in 1931 and was given up for adoption to an American missionary couple, Dr. Edward Perkins and his wife, Georgina. She attended English-speaking schools in China, and after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, left China with her family and for three years lived and attended high school in Yonkers, New York. In 1945, she and her family returned to Asia, and spent a year in British India before moving back to China in 1946, where Jean finished high school and began college. In 1950, Jean's parents fled China, leaving Jean behind. She attended Nanking Gin-Ling Women's College and Chekiang Medical College in Hangchow, becoming a renowned ophthalmologist, researcher, and teacher in Shanghai and later Hangchow. She returned to America in 1980 and was a research fellow in several top laboratories at Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI), an affiliate of Massachusetts General Hospital-Harvard Medical School. She died in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 2014.