[4] Fiona Spence was born in c. 1946 in Bromley, Kent, (now in Greater London) United Kingdom to an Irish mother, Pauline, (née Connolly) and an Australian-born father, Dr. John Walton Spence, whilst serving with the British Army, Fiona's parents married in 1940, in Jaffa, Mandatory Palestine.
Her character had become immensely popular during her two-years on the show and, when news of her departure was announced, the Ten Network received at least 100 phone calls and countless fan mail asking for Spence to remain.
"[11] During her last year with Prisoner, Spence appeared in supporting roles in both the television mini-series Women of the Sun and the television movie I Can Jump Puddles, which also featured a number of other former Prisoner co-stars including Sigrid Thornton, Sandy Gore, Lesley Baker and Anne Phelan.
Mann revealed in 2022, during an interview with podcast series Talking Prisoner, the cameo was the three of them standing in the yard and waving goodbye to one of the characters.
[12][13] In March 1984, Spence starred alongside Geraldine Cook in the 60-minute "softcore feminist" black comedy Mums, at Melbourne's La Mama Theatre.
[15] She returned to the theatre in the early 1990s recreating the role of Vera Bennett in a British stage play version of Prisoner.
She also starred in a theatrical pantomime of Aladdin with fellow Home and Away co-star Greg Benson at the Theatre Royal, in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent during December 1991 and January 1992, as well as a short-lived stage show, Lipstick Dreams, in the United Kingdom.