Catherine Meyer was educated at the Lycée Charles de Gaulle in London and gained a degree in Russian regional studies from the London School of Slavonic and East European Studies. She went into financial services, working in the 1970s and 80s at Merrill Lynch, Dean Witter and E.F. Hutton. In 1979 she was one of the first women to be licensed as a commodity broker. Her Handbook on the Mechanism of the London Metal Exchange Option Market was published in 1982. In 1983 she was registered as a stockbroker.

In October 1997 she married her third husband Sir Christopher Meyer on the eve of his departure to Washington DC to become British Ambassador to the United States.

In 1998 she co-founded the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC), the international arm of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), subsequently becoming CEO of ICMEC/Europe. In 2000, she created her own charity, PACT, affiliated to ICMEC.

During her time in Washington, Lady Meyer gave evidence to committees of the US Congress and the US Senate, which led to several concurrent resolutions urging better compliance by certain signatory states, including Germany, with the Hague Convention 1996;and persuaded both Presidents Clinton and Bush to raise with the German Chancellor cases of parental child abduction to Germany, including her own.

She has also taken her campaign against international parental child abduction to Europe, giving evidence to the Belgian Senate.

Lady Meyer has published two books: Two Children behind A Wall and They Are My Children Too. There is also an account of her struggle to see her children in DC Confidential, the memoirs of her husband, Sir Christopher Meyer. From 2003 to 2007 she was a non-executive director of the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange.In 1999 she received the Adam Walsh Rainbow Award for outstanding contribution to children's causes.

Books

• Catherine Laylle (1997), Two Children Behind a Wall, Arrow Books Ltd. (ISBN 0-099-25504-9)
• Catherine Meyer (1999), These are My Children, Too, PublicAffairs,U.S. (ISBN 1-891-62015-0)