Though Jean'ne's father worked for the Northern Pacific Railway, her mother, a teacher, was unemployed for much of her childhood due to the Great Depression and the prevailing notion that families only needed one breadwinner.
Shreeve graduated in 1953 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, then worked for a year at Missoula County High School as a mathematics teacher.
[1] In the early years of her career at Idaho, Shreeve worked with Malcolm Renfrew, who mentored her as she built a laboratory and began to publish her research.
After earning the Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, she spent a sabbatical awardee year in Europe, lecturing and working at the University of Bristol and University of Göttingen, where she worked with Oskar Glemser[3] She has spent much of her career advocating for women chemists and research into fluorine chemistry, serving on a variety of committees for the American Chemical Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science.
She is known for working with highly energetic nitrogenous and fluoridated compounds, and synthesizing a variety of widely used rocket propellant oxidizers.