Emma Appleton was born in December 1991 in Witney, Oxfordshire, England as Emma Jill Appleton. She attended West Witney Primary School and then Wood Green School. Appleton began a modelling career as a teenager, which progressed to acting in 2017, when an opportunity opened for the cast of the BBC Three series Clique (2017) where she played the role of Fay Brookstone for 6 episodes. Her next major role was as Feef Symonds in six episodes of Channel 4's spy thriller Traitors in 2019.She landed a role as Princess Renfri, alongside Henry Cavill in the Netflix fantasy drama series The Witcher (2019).