Originally an orphaned child, Grace was adopted by one of Umbrella's founders Oswell E. Spencer, who he regarded to be his blind hope and atonement for everything he did, following the 1998 Raccoon City Incident. Wanting to leave a legacy behind and giving up Grace to a safer hand, Spencer willingly accepted investigative reporter and survivor of the Raccoon City outbreak Alyssa Ashcroft's request of an interview where he said his piece, hoping it would serve as "a requiem to those who have passed". Towards the end of the interview, Alyssa was initially alarmed of Spencer holding a baby Grace, thinking she was one of his many test subjects in his quest for evolution and godhood. However, Spencer denied it, claiming Grace to be a normal child he had taken in. Spencer asked Alyssa to hold the infant Grace, and designated her to be his blind hope. Following Spencer's death in 2006, Spencer's butler Patrick wrote to Alyssa and informed her of his master's final will, granting her the right of Grace's guardianship and becoming her adoptive mother. Eventually, Grace would take on her mother's last name, Ashcroft. Due to the nature of her mother's freelance work, they would often move around, going from one place to another where Alyssa would find work. This inadvertently impacted Ashcroft's social skills, as constant transfers making it difficult for her to form friendships.[6] In 2004, former Umbrella scientist and Spencer's devotee, Victor Gideon learnt of Spencer's last research in memory-blood and its capabilities of transferring memories through t-Virus. Gideon thought of Elpis as Spencer's last work to be a powerful virus, but it was locked behind a password in ARK, a deep underground facility beneath the ruins of Raccoon City. Eventually, Gideon learnt of Grace's existence, and presumed her to be the successful child clone born from the memory transfer experiment, and had Spencer's memory needed to unlock Elpis. In December of that same year, Gideon acquired her incomplete medical records, and attempted to model the many clones after her but still could not replicate Grace. While Gideon and the Connections were providing clones from ARK, and attempted to replicate her, he also tried to track her down. In 2018, Ashcroft and her mother arrived at the city of Wrenwood where she had found her next work. For 2 days, they stayed there till her mother's work, during those days gideon sends a assassin with a strand of the T virus and kills Grace’s mother