Rosalie Shaw grew up on a farm in rural Victoria, Australia, and was a teacher and the a nurse before she became a doctor. Inspired by the work of Dame Cicely Saunders, she decided to do palliative care and went on to set up one of the first palliative care units in Australia at Hollywood Hospital in Perth. In 1992, she was invited to come to Singapore to help establish the home care service of the Hospice Care Association. She originally intended to stay for just a year, but to the great good fortune of Singapore and many thousands of patients and families, she chose to stay.