Jennine Donier was born in Longview, Washington, August 11, 1949, to Dave and Dolly Clark and raised primarily in Klickitat County, Washington.

She is the eldest of four children. Their backdoor was Gifford Pinchot National Forest. They grew up on a farm with a variety of livestock and a myriad of wild pets: skunk, magpie, raccoon, crow, and deer. She fell in love with the written word at age 6 when she learned phonics. She attended a rural school K-12 in Trout Lake, Washington.

At sixteen, she lived rural in an old farmhouse and cooked on an old Home Comfort wood cookstove. She comes from a long line of storytellers. She derives from a sturdy pioneer stock of grandparents who came to the Trout Lake area in the late 1890s.

Her poetry and writings were encouraged by author Robert Franklin Leslie, whom she met when he came to do a story on their wild pets. Bob Leslie offered to coauthor his last book with her, but during its writing, he had a stroke, and it is yet to be finished. She has had poetry published in New Voices, Poetry.com, and World of Poetry and has gold and silver awards from those.

Jennine also wrote for the White Salmon Enterprise and later for the Tekoa Standard Register. She took a course of writing and journalism at Spokane Falls Community College in Spokane, Washington, and a course with the Institute of Children's Literature. She is a wife of fifty-three years, married to Anton J. Donier, and they have four adult children, thirteen grandchildren, and ten great-grandchildren. She has many stories and works she wants to share with the world.