Serena Alleyne Armstrong-Jones, Countess of Snowdon (née Stanhope; born 1 March 1970) is an Anglo-Irish aristocrat and the daughter-in-law of Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, and a niece-by-marriage of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
The Hon. Serena Alleyne Stanhope was born in Limerick, Ireland, the daughter of the then Viscount Petersham and his wife Virginia Freeman-Jackson, a debutante. Her parents divorced when she was 13 years old. She has one older brother. Through her father, she is a descendant of King Charles II of England's illegitimate child, Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton, which makes her a distant cousin of Diana, Princess of Wales, and of other members of the British royal family.
Stanhope spent most of her childhood between Chelsea with her father and her father's girlfriend and later wife Anita Howard, Countess of Suffolk, and Monaco with her mother.