She was christened The Mother of chlorophyll c by one of her early mentors, Professor Andrew Benson of the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego.

[1] During her younger years, she did not have a particular interest in science, preferring "playing with animals and dolls and helped my mother in the kitchen and loved cooking".

[4] In 1965, she was aboard the maiden voyage of the scientific expedition on the Alpha Helix, the research vessel of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, which was coming to Australia to study the ecology of the Great Barrier Reef.

Her research led to a sabbatical at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1973; during this period she met Australian biologist and future husband Dr Andy Heron.

[6] In 2012, several of her colleagues recognised her achievements in "Tribute to Shirley Jeffrey: 50 years of research on chlorophyll c" published in Phycologia (Volume 51, 2: 123–125).