Her students included Emma Roberts, Anna Maria Fielding, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Frances Anne Kemble and Rosina Bulwer Lytton.

She was born in 1774 and in 1779 her family moved to Henley-on-Thames where her father borrowed money from her aunt who ran a school (where she was educated).

Her father who been a dealer is spirits and drugs died in 1782 in debt.

[1] Rowden went on to work at Reading Abbey Girls' School which was run by the principal Dominique de St Quentin and Ann Pitts who was the senior mistress and his wife.

These included actress Frances Anne Kemble, and the novelists Anna Maria Fielding, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Emma Roberts, and Rosina Bulwer Lytton.