Richardson was born in Abingdon in 1873, the third of four daughters. After the fourth daughter was born her father (Charles) began referring to Dorothy as his son. Richardson also attributed this habit to her own boylike willfulness. She lived at 'Whitefield' a large mansion type house on Albert Park (built by her father in 1871 and now owned by Abingdon School. Her family moved to Worthing, West Sussex in 1880 and then Putney, London in 1883. In London she attended a progressive school influenced by the ideas of John Ruskin, and where the pupils were encouraged to think for themselves. Here she studied French, German, literature, logic and psychology. At seventeen, because of her father's financial difficulties she went to work as a governess and teacher, first in 1891 for six months at a finishing school in Hanover, Germany. In 1895 Richardson gave up work as a governess to take care of her severely depressed mother, but her mother committed suicide the same year. Richardson's father had become bankrupt at the end of 1893.