Diana Ogilvy Hamley was the only daughter of the Hon. Wymond Thomas Ogilvy Hamley. WO Hamley came to New Westminster, British Columbia, in the late 1850s, where he assumed the position of Collector of Customs for the new colony. He fathered a child, Diana, by an unknown First Nations woman, possibly from the area near Chilliwack, along the Fraser River. Hamley sent the child to a family in Victoria, where she was raised to school age; after this, Hamley sent her to finish her education in England. She toured the Continent, like most upper middle class English schoolgirls of the day, learning to paint, play the piano, sing, etc. She returned to Victoria, where she lived with her father for a short time before her marriage to Paulus Aemilius Irving, a young lawyer who had moved to B.C. from Ontario.

Diana was a beautiful young woman with a regal bearing, despite her short stature. She had large, dark eyes, and dark curly hair. Especially in early portraits, it is easy to see her First Nations heritage.

The identity of Diana's mother has long been a mystery, as Hamley filled in all official documents without naming the mother of his child. However, Diana seems to have been proud of her Aboriginal heritage, and during at least one Victoria census, she listed herself and her youngest daughter, still living at home, as "Indian."