[4][5] She has a BA in law from Oxford (1989), and a DProf from Middlesex University (2021), where her thesis topic was The Ocean in a Drop: a narrative of reintegration for an era of disintegration.

[7][8] In 2003, she became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and took part in an Anglo-American expedition that discovered Inca ruins in the Andean cloudforests near Machu Picchu, Peru.

On 14 March 2006, she finished the Atlantic Rowing Race as the only solo female competitor, taking 103 days to complete the crossing.

She maintained her daily weblog until day 80 when her satellite phone failed, leaving only the movement detected by her positional transponder.

[14] Shortly after her successful Atlantic crossing, she announced her bid to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean from the United States to Australia.

[15][16] She began stage one on 12 August 2007 from Crescent City, California, and was rescued 10 days later, approximately 90 miles offshore, by the U.S. Coast Guard when a well-wisher called them out after becoming concerned when she mentioned heavy weather and a head injury in her blog.

On 28 August, after suffering adverse winds and currents for several days, with food supplies running low and her water-maker broken, Savage realised that she was unlikely to be able to reach Tuvalu and reluctantly changed course for Tarawa.

This row was postponed indefinitely in May 2012 due to unusually large numbers of icebergs drifting past the coast of Newfoundland, the result of a huge chunk of ice breaking off a glacier in Greenland in 2010; the situation was deemed to represent an unacceptable level of risk to the safety of the rowers.

[31] Savage stood unsuccessfully in May 2023 for the Liberal Democrats in a by-election for the Painswick and Upton ward of Stroud District Council in Gloucestershire.

[32][33] She was selected in September 2023 as the Liberal Democrat candidate for the new South Cotswolds constituency, which covers parts of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

[34] She won the seat at the 2024 general election, defeating James Gray (who had been the Conservative MP for North Wiltshire from 1997 to 2024).

[45] Savage was appointed MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to environmental awareness and fundraising.