[1] Born in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, one of a pair of identical twin girls of an American mother and an Irish father, the brother of the politician and poet Desmond FitzGerald,[2][3] she trained at the Central School of Art in London, and later married the painter and printmaker Michael Rothenstein RA, son of William Rothenstein.
Duffy and Michael were important members of the famous art community which lived in the north Essex village during the post-war period.
The Rothensteins, along with other village artists, organised a series of large open-house exhibitions that garnered much press attention during the 1950s.
After her second marriage she painted under the name of Duffy Ayers, and regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy.
One of her oil portraits, "The Arrival" (1993) is in the North West Essex collection of the Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden.