Leigh was born Vivian Mary Hartley[3] on 5 November 1913 in British India on the campus of St. Paul's School, Darjeeling. She was the only child of Ernest Richard Hartley, an English broker, and his wife, Gertrude Mary Frances (née Yackjee; she also used her mother's maiden name of Robinson).[4] Her father was born in Scotland in 1882, while her mother, a devout Roman Catholic, was born in Darjeeling in 1888 and may have been of Irishand Parsi Indian ancestry.