Johan studied at the University of Malaya (in Kuala Lumpur).
[1] Johan attained her PhD at Monash University in Melbourne.
Her thesis, published in 1974, was The Administrative Elite in the Federated Malay States: An Aspect of Malaysian Social History.
In 1991 she began teaching at Australian National University in Canberra.
[6] Johan married Australian political scientist and author Harold Crouch in 1973.