[citation needed] Sterling was born in New York City, the daughter of Eleanor Ward (née Deans) and William Allen Adriance Jr, an architect and advertising executive.

[3] Jane grew up in a wealthy household and attended private schools before moving with her family to Europe and South America.

Midway through the voyage, she found out that the airship she had originally been booked on, the Hindenburg, had been destroyed in a massive fire upon arriving in New Jersey on May 6, 1937.

Alternating between films and television, Sterling appeared in several television anthology series during the 1950s, and played film roles in Caged (1950), Mystery Street (1950), Union Station (1950), The Mating Season (1951), Ace in the Hole (1951), Flesh and Fury (1952), The High and the Mighty (1954), Female on the Beach (1955), and High School Confidential (1958).

Later that year, she travelled to Britain to play the role of Julia in the 1956 version of George Orwell's 1984 despite being several months pregnant at the time.

Sterling's later life was marked by illness and injury that included diabetes, a broken hip, and a series of strokes.

Sterling died three months later, on March 26, 2004, aged 82, at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.