Jean Denton had a rich and varied career, including four seasons as a highly successful racing and rally ace, before she was brought into the Government as a life peer in 1991. After a brief spell as a Government whip, she became a junior minister, first at the DTI and then at the DOE. But her most rewarding spell as a Parliamentary Under Secretary was at the Northern Irish office from 1994 until the Conservative defeat in May 1997. She took a particular interest in the economy and agriculture as well as covering women's issues.
Born Jean Moss on 29 December 1935, she was educated at Rothwell Grammar School and the LSE, and joined Procter and Gamble in 1959. After relatively brief spells with EIU and IPC, she moved to the Hotel and catering Department at the University of Surrey 1966-69. She had married shortly after graduating and her husband, an engineering graduate from Cambridge called Anthony Denton, who lectured at Imperial before rejoining the Noble Denton Group, enjoyed motor racing. Jean Denton raced herself for four seasons between 1969 and 1972 and then moved into the motor industry, first as marketing director of the Huxford Group 1972-8 and then after two years with the Heron Group she became the Managing Director of Herondrive 1980-85. She was then appointed External Affairs Director of Austin Rover, but left to become the Deputy Chairman of the Black Country Development Corporation 1987-91. She served on the Engineering Council from 1986 until 1991. In addition she was a director of a number of other companies including the Ordnance Survey, British Nuclear Fuels, Burson Marsteller, the London and Edinburgh Insurance Group, Triplex Lloyd and Think Green. She chaired the Marketing Group of Great Britain 1987-8 and Forum UK 1989-92.
She had been appointed to the Board of UK 2000 1986-8, to the Teachers Pay Review Body 1989-91 and to the NHS Policy Board 1990-91, but her interest in health matters had started more than a decade earlier and she had chaired Women on the Move against Cancer from 1979-92.
Her connection with motor racing led her to act as a trustee of the Brooklands Museum from 1987 to 1989, while her connection with the LSE was resumed when she became a Governor in 1982.
Her forthright common sense, warm personality and shrewd counsel, when coupled to her wide knowledge of industry, made her an ideal candidate for recruitment to the House of Lords and propelled her rapidly into a series of ministerial jobs, all of them carried out with great competence.
Latterly she had suffered ill health, but her early death is a loss not only to her party, but to the House of Lords.