Sylvia Fox-Strangways was born in Jubbulpore, Bengal, in India. After moving to England, she studied at Central School of Arts & Crafts, Camberwell Schools of Arts & Crafts, and at the Royal College of Art in London.

In 1926 she worked as an artist potter with Bernard LEACH at the Leach Pottery in St Ives. Leach recommended her for the post of Resident Artist at the Dartington Hall Estates, which involved drawing and painting as well as building a pottery workshop and kiln. Due to her hard work in St Ives, and during the years 1927 to 1929 at Dartington, her health declined, forcing her into early retirement in 1930.

She participated in the 13th exhibition of the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society at the Royal Academy in London in 1926. Fox-Strangways was also a poet. A collection of her poems was published by the St Catherine Press in London in 1950.

Items of her work - tiles and vessels - are on display at the Rufford Ceramics Gallery, Nottinghamshire, and many pieces of her pottery and decorated tiles remain in the Collection at Dartington Hall near Totnes, Devon.

Her 1926 address was given as Alvington, Lustleigh, Devon. She died in Plymouth in April 1975.