Bridget was brought up by her maternal grandfather, the powerful statesman William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley.

She was one of the three surviving daughters of courtier, playwright, and poet Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, and Anne Cecil, daughter of Queen Elizabeth I of England's chief minister, William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley.

This marriage produced a half-brother for Bridget, Henry who became her father's heir, and later succeeded him as the 18th Earl of Oxford.

Bridget already had an older illegitimate half-brother, Sir Edward de Vere, by her father's scandalous affair with the Queen's Lady of the Bedchamber, Anne Vavasour.

Bridget died sometime between December 1630 and March 1631, aged 46, and was buried in Westminster Abbey in a tomb which she shares with her mother, grandmother and sisters.