Originally named Aina (or Ina),[3] she was born in 1843 in Oke-Odan, an Egbado Yoruba village in West Africa which recently became independent from the Oyo Empire (present-day southwestern Nigeria) after its collapse.

Biographer and historian of Africa Martin Meredith quotes King Ghezo telling the British, "The slave trade has been the ruling principle of my people.

Their songs celebrate their victories and the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery.

"[6][7][8] In July 1850, Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy arrived to West Africa on a British diplomatic mission, where he unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate with King Ghezo to end Dahomey's participation in the Atlantic slave trade.

King Ghezo offered Forbes a footstool, rich country cloth, a keg of rum, ten heads of cowry shells, and a caboceers stool.

[11] Commander Forbes then heard a scream and then looked to a group of Dahomans who were waving their guns and carrying people in little baskets.

"[12] The people in the baskets were dressed in white garments, were to be slaughtered and their blood dripped on the graves of high ranking Dahomans.

However, King Gezo's interpreters clarified that the custom of watering the ancestors' graves was an ancient one and could not be discontinued without dishonouring the Dahomey people.

Although her actual ancestry is unknown,[13] Forbes came to the conclusion that Aina was likely to have come from a high status background because of the tribal markings on her face and that she had not been sold to European slave traders.

"[14][10] Captain Forbes accepted Aina on behalf of Queen Victoria and embarked on his journey back to Britain.

Her jailers often taunted her with the truth that she was being saved for ceremonial purposes too, and when it suited him, King Gezo intended to sacrifice her as a gift to his royal ancestors' tomb.

[11] Queen Victoria was impressed by the young princess's "exceptional intelligence", and had the girl, whom she called Sally,[15] raised as her goddaughter in the British middle class.

In the school register, her name appears only as Sally Bonetta, pupil number 24, June 1851, who married Captain Davies in England in 1862 and was the ward of Queen Victoria.

[20] She was later commanded by the Queen to marry Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies at St Nicholas' Church in Brighton, East Sussex, in August 1862, after a period spent in the town preparing for the wedding.

[23] She married the successful Lagos doctor Dr. John Randle, becoming the stepmother of his son, Nigerian businessman and socialite J. K.

Many of Sara's other descendants now live in either Britain or Sierra Leone; a separate branch, the Randle family of Lagos, remains prominent in contemporary Nigeria.

In her memory, her husband erected an over-eight-foot granite obelisk-shaped monument at Ijon in Western Lagos, where he had started a cocoa farm.

[28] A plaque commemorating Forbes Bonetta was placed on Palm Cottage in 2016, as part of the television series Black and British: A Forgotten History.

[29] A newly commissioned portrait of Forbes Bonetta by artist Hannah Uzor went on display at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight in October 2020 as part of an effort by English Heritage to recognise black history in England.