Lakshmi N. Menon was born in Thiruvananthapuram, and is the child of Rama Varma Thampan and Madhavikutty Amma. In 1930 she married Professor V.K. Nandan Menon, who had been the vice chancellor of the University of Travancore

Travancore

Kingdom of Travancore was a former Hindu feudal kingdom and Indian Princely State with its capital at Padmanabhapuram or Trivandrum ruled by the Travancore Royal Family. The Kingdom of Travancore comprised most of modern day southern Kerala, Kanyakumari district, and the southernmost parts of...

 and Patna University, as wells as the director for the Indian Institute of Public Administration

Indian Institute of Public Administration

The Indian Institute of Public Administration , is a premier public policy school autonomous institution in India for public administration studies and one of the major social science resources in India.-History:...

.

She served in the Ministry of External Affairs as Parliamentary Secretary from 1952 to 1957, Deputy Minister from 1957 to 1962 and Minister of State to 1967. Retiring from political service in 1967, she turned to social work and also to writing, authoring among other things a book on Indian women for the Oxford Pamphlets on Indian Affairs series, published by Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

. She helped to found the Federation of University Women in India. In recognition of her services, she was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1957.