Elizabeth, Countess of Home was the wife of William Home, 8th Earl of Home. She had been born in Jamaica to William Gibbons, a wealthy West Indies merchant and his wife of Vere. She first married James Lawes, son of Nicholas Lawes, the island's governor. She inherited a great fortune on her James' death in 1734. Moving to England, she remarried to the Earl of Home in 1742, though soon after the marriage he left her (he died in 1761). Neither marriage produced any children.
In 1775 Elizabeth, now in her 60s and popularly known as the 'Queen of Hell', she commissioned James Wyatt and then Robert Adam to create a town house in London for her at 20 Portman Square. This became known as Home House.