Renard is a descendant of the German composer/conductor Paul Albin Stenz who was awarded the Gold Medal of Orange-Nassau by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.

The day after reading about Cossey in a Dutch tabloid, Renard consulted her doctor and shortly after, the Amsterdam Gender Team.

Louis Gooren,[2] a professor of endocrinology at the special chair of transsexology at the Free University Amsterdam, guided her through the process.

The medical team involved in her GRS included plastic surgeons Auke de Boer and J. Joris Hage as well as gynecologists C. Jager and A. Drogendijk.

In 1984, at age 18, Renard learned from the Amsterdam Gender Team that she was most likely the youngest person in the world to receive complete contemporary GRS.

[3] In the early 1980s, Louis Gooren, a professor, put pressure on the Dutch parliament to discuss the option of legal recognition of post-operative transsexuals in the Netherlands.

The Netherlands became the first country in the world to legally and fully recognise post-operative transsexuals by accepting a new law in 1985.

[4] Fearing rejection and discrimination, Renard never volunteered to mention her gender reassignment to friends, colleagues and lovers.

[15][16][17] In May 2000, Renard established the Pantau Foundation to raise funds and help destitute Tibetan refugee children living in exile in India.

Together with her Dharamsala-based spokesperson, Jonathan Blair, and New York-based friends Bobby John Parker Jr. and Sebastian Bond, the foundation supports a growing number of Tibetan children.

Renard had numerous romantic relationships, some of which she describes in her memoirs including Malicious Mistake (1985) and Pholomolo - No man No Woman (2007).

[18] In 1992, during a business trip to the French Riviera, she met a young British aristocrat residing in Paris, the son of a billionaire.

[18] Though deeply in love with each other, the man was forced by his parents to end his relationship with her in order to marry a British lady (aristocrat).

[18] As part of her spiritual journey in the Himalayas, Renard practiced celibacy and abstinence between November 2001 and March 2005.