After a childhood in which her father died by suicide, Richard worked in department stores to pay her drama school fees before appearing regularly on-screen from the early 1960s.

In the television series Dad's Army, she was Private Walker's girlfriend, before being cast as Miss Brahms in Are You Being Served?

Her parents, Henry and Beatrice Reay (née Cutter) Emerton, were publicans and ran the Corporation Hotel in the town.

[1] She was enrolled at The Royal Masonic School for Girls in Rickmansworth after her father's death, as Henry had been a Freemason, and help with fees was provided by the organisation.

[3] Richard dreamed of becoming a TV continuity girl or film star from a young age and, after leaving school at 15, she enrolled at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in London.

Her injuries were so severe that her friend phoned Richard's mother from the hospital thinking she was dead; she had to have thirty-three stitches in her head.

[4] She made her television debut in November 1961 when she appeared alongside Mandy Rice-Davies with Sammy Davis Jr. in the ATV variety show Saturday Spectacular.

[3] Upon leaving drama school, Richard wrote to theatrical agents hoping to be taken on for work, including Robert Stigwood.

[4] Drawing on from the success of "Come Outside", Richard was taken on by the Lom Artists agency, and her first role with her new agent was in the sitcom Bulldog Breed with Amanda Barrie for Granada Television before starring as Susan Sullivan, a receptionist, in five episodes of Harpers West One, an ATV television drama series about a fictional department store.

[4] Richard first became familiar to television audiences in 1967 playing teenage supermarket till girl Joyce Harker, a regular character, in The Newcomers, until the show's end in 1969.

While appearing in Are You Being Served?, she had parts in The Fenn Street Gang, Z Cars and Bowler as well as having regular roles in Hogg's Back and Not On Your Nellie.

ended, Richard began appearing as the matriarch Pauline Fowler in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, a role she played from the first episode in 1985.

[10] Pauline has been the subject of television documentaries, behind-the-scenes books, tie-in novels, and comedy sketch shows.

[11] Until the onscreen death of her character at Christmas 2006, she was one of only two original cast members of that programme to appear continuously from the first episode in 1985, along with Adam Woodyatt, who played her on-screen nephew Ian Beale.

In April 2007, Richard announced that she would be appearing in a new role for the first time since leaving EastEnders, in a new sitcom penned by David Croft called Here Comes The Queen.

In September 2007, it was announced that Richard would appear in the second series of ITV1's sitcom Benidorm playing a "loud-mouthed, rude" character who used a wheelchair; her episode aired in April 2008.

In February 2008, she landed the role of Mrs. Crump in the Agatha Christie's Marple episode "A Pocket Full of Rye" starring Julia McKenzie.

[19] Articles about her departure from EastEnders suggested that her health problems did not play any role in her decision, but was because her character in the soap remarried, to Richard's displeasure.

[22] She made a half-hour programme, Wendy Richard: To Tell You the Truth, documenting the last three months of her life, which was broadcast on BBC One on 19 March 2009.

Richard's agent, Kevin Francis, reported she had died on 26 February 2009 of breast cancer, aged 65, at a clinic in Harley Street, London.

Actor Bill Treacher, Richard's on-screen husband Arthur Fowler in EastEnders, said the actress was a "true professional."

Richard's funeral, on 9 March 2009 at St Marylebone Parish Church, was attended by figures from the media industry,[26] along with many fans.