Loretta Lynda Chekani was born in 1949 in a family of Albanian origin. She studied at New England public schools before receiving a bachelor's degree from Clark University, where she majored in English. Her past lives include clerical, administrative, and part-time teaching at Clark and a "Dickensian six-month experience" as a meter maid. After college, her first professional writing job was for an exhibition catalog. This led to a job moonlighting as a corporate video scriptwriter. During this time she met a video producer who enticed her to write novels...and eventually to marry him. Her first Regency manuscript, Isabella, was bought by the first New York editor who read it and led to a successful career as a romance author. Chase said of her marriage: "The books resulting from this union have won a surprising number of awards, including the Romance Writers of America RITA® Award." Her books have also won several Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice awards, various RRA-L (Romance Readers Anonymous) awards, and the All About Romance Top 100 Romances award multiple times.