She was the only child of the literary scholar Bonamy Dobrée, and his wife, the author and poet Gladys May Mabel (Valentine), née Brooke-Pechell.
[2] Dobrée was evacuated to the United States when World War II broke out and stayed with friends of her parents.
While studying at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore in Maryland, she stopped playing the violin for a clarinet she found by chance at her new home.
[1] She reverted to performing with French instruments and amassed a total of six basset horns of which she carried in a special case for easy transportation while travelling by plane.
[2] It was when she was performing the sonata for piano and basset horn by Franz Danzi, and with the clarinettist Thea King, the Mendelssohn Konzertstücke op.
She and the pianist Alexander Kelly gave a series of concerts in 1973 at Leighton House in Holland Park to celebrate the pairing 21st anniversary of the beginning of their partnership.
[1] Dobrée travelled to the United States in 1978 and gave performances at the National Gallery to which the critic for The Washington Times Joan Reinthaler was complementary towards.
[2] She continued to expand the contemporary repertoire for the basset horn throughout the 1990s and commissioned new works from several British and Eastern European composers.