[1] Golding was educated at Richard J. Reynolds High School, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she earned second place in a talent competition in 1970, performing Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.

[4] After meeting her husband, in 1983 she moved with him to Bristol, where she established a marketing and communications business[5] with clients including the Office for the Deputy Prime Minister, the Department for Education and Employment on its New Deal initiative, the Government Office for the South West, several Training and Enterprise Councils in the South West and Business Link.

[citation needed] She has served on a number of public bodies and private sector organisations, including as non-executive director of Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust,[7] regional director of Business in the Community, North Bristol NHS Trust, GWR West, a member of the Ethnic Minority Business Forum, the Home Office representative on the Avon & Somerset Police Authority, governor of the University of the West of England, governor of the City of Bristol College, Regional Advisory Council for ITV West and as a member of the General Chiropractic Council.

[5][9] In 2009, Golding was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to minority ethnic people in the South-West of England.

She was married to Bob Golding, a zoologist and the former director of the Zoological Garden at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria;[4][10] he died in January 2022.