[3] Dean's family moved to the north Buckinghamshire village of Stoke Goldington near Newport Pagnell when she was three years old.

[5] Dean began performing professionally at the age of 12, when she was cast as Pepper in the musical Annie at London's Victoria Palace Theatre.

[3] A trained singer, she played the lead female, Sandy, in the musical Grease, and also sang with a rock group called The Young Uns, who toured the country supporting stage acts such as Bobby Davro and Tom O'Connor.

[4][6] Between the ages of 13 and 17, Dean appeared in numerous television programmes, including: Love Story;[7] Tales Out Of School;[7] the Matthew Kelly sitcom Relative Strangers;[8] Grange Hill, playing a student named Lucinda Oliver (credited as Titia Dean);[9] and the role of Dawn in the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside.

[10] In 1984, Dean auditioned to play one of the original characters in BBC One's new soap opera, EastEnders; she was selected for an interview on the strength of a photograph alone.

[11] The creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith, were looking for a "bouncy, attractive, oddly vulnerable young woman" to play the part of Sharon Watts, and out of the various applicants they had seen, they believed that only Dean had all of those qualities.

[15] Six years following her initial exit, Dean was lured back to EastEnders by producer John Yorke,[16] reprising the role of Sharon from 2001 to 2006.

[19] In February 2012, producer Bryan Kirkwood announced that Dean would make a second return to EastEnders, having been absent for a period of six years.

She made her return on 13 August 2012 after fleeing from her wedding to her fiancé John Hewland, with her son, Dennis Rickman Jr. and Phil Mitchell.

On stage, she starred as Nurse Fay in the Joe Orton comedy play, Loot, working alongside actor Michael Elphick.

In 2006, Dean appeared as the wicked witch in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Deco, Northampton, taking over the role from her EastEnders co-star, Gillian Taylforth, who pulled out due to ill health.

[28] Growing up in the public eye was reportedly hard for Dean, and the constant media attention on her appearance was something she found especially tough.

Dean says her self-confidence was damaged during this time, and this, as well as back pain, contributed to her decision to get a breast reduction in her teens.

By her 30s, she considered herself to be a lot more comfortable in her own skin[clarification needed], and far more relaxed about public interest than she used to be as a teenager, commenting: "I have stopped pleasing people – and I'm calmer and more self assured than I've ever been.

[34] In 1997, Dean, along with Susan Tully, was involved with the Third World charity Plan International; they were sent to a remote village in Senegal to help highlight one of the organisation's aid projects, designed to bring running water to drought-hit areas.