Her paternal grandparents were White Russians who had left Soviet Russia for the United Kingdom shortly after the October Revolution.
Her maternal grandfather was the noted eccentric aristocrat Robert Heber-Percy, whose property, including the Faringdon House estate in Oxfordshire, she inherited at the age of 25; through him she is a descendant of Algernon Percy, 1st Earl of Beverley, of the family of the Dukes of Northumberland.
[1][2] She grew up in Putney in south-west London, where her father was founder of Britain's first synthesizer manufacturer, Electronic Music Studios (London) Ltd. She studied social anthropology at Cambridge University.
Sofka Zinovieff has lived and worked in Russia, Italy, and, for many years, in Greece.
She and her Greek husband Vassilis Papadimitriou live between Athens and London.