Olga Perry was the second generation of her family born and raised in India after her grandmother emigrated from Ireland at the age of twenty. A woman of taste with a trained eye for beauty, she was a passionate supporter of young artists from the land of her birth. While living in Calcutta in the 1950s and 60s with her husband, a senior executive at Esso Oil in Southeast Asia, she became a strong supporter of the work of Mother Theresa and her Missionaries of Charity there with the help of Esso Oil.