[2] In 1946, soon after World War II had ended and peace had returned to Europe, Mills left South Africa and emigrated to the UK, having won an RAD scholarship to attend the Sadler's Wells Ballet School in London.
Petite, with dark hair, a pretty, oval face, and ideal proportions, she possessed a vivid personality, a firm technique, and an innate musicality.
In repertory works, she displayed great charm in such lighthearted roles as Swanilda in Coppélia, Lise in Ashton's La Fille Mal Gardée, and the title characters in John Cranko's Pineapple Poll and Léonide Massine's Mam'zelle Angot, but she was also effective as the vapid Ballerina in Michel Fokine's Petrushka, as the Betrayed Girl in de Valois's The Rake's Progress, and as the adulterous, runaway Bride in Alfred Rodrigues's Blood Wedding.
She was praised for her execution of the notoriously demanding and often unrewarding fairy variations in the prologue to The Sleeping Beauty as well as for her performance as the Princess Aurora, the title role.
In 1955, MacMillan cast Lane in a principal role in Danses Concertantes, set to the Stravinsky score and with designs by Nicholas Georgiadis, then also at the beginning of a great career.
There she settled in the Greek Cypriot town of Kyrenia, a thriving cultural centre and popular tourist destination on the northern coast of the island, where she founded her own small school, the Maryon Lane Ballet Academy.