She grew up in Sheen in London, the second daughter of Margaret and Jack Davies, a bank manager. She attended the Richmond County School for Girls. Wanting to be a journalist, she left school at 16 in order to train in shorthand and typing at the Anne Godden Secretarial College in Putney, where her mother was a teacher.
She was the fourth wife and widow of actor Hugh Lloyd. These new skills obtained her an apprenticeship at the Kilburn Times. Having done work for the Sunday Mirror as a freelancer, Shan Davies, as she then was, started work at the Sunday People in 1976, eventually becoming Fleet Street"s first female crime correspondent.
She met Hugh Lloyd in 1978, at Allen"s, a famous restaurant in London"s West End, while he was performing in Number Sex Please, We"re British.
The two soon realized that they lived around the corner from one another. They moved to Worthing, West Sussex, in 2003.
Shan Lloyd continued to pursue a professional career as a freelance showbiz reporter for the Brighton and Hove Leader. After Hugh Lloyd died Shan Lloyd herself lost the will to live and started to drink heavily, downing a litre of vodka a day.
Shan Lloyd died on 13 December 2008 at Worthing Hospital in Worthing at the age of 55, after falling into an alcoholic coma.
In her later years, Lloyd became an active member of the Red Hat Society.
