After Kings Norton Girls' School, Jones attended King Edward VI Handsworth School, to complete A Levels and went on to take a gap year (during which she appeared in the BBC series Servants). She then read English at Wadham College, Oxford, graduating with a 2:1 in 2006. Whilst studying English, she appeared in student plays, including Attis in which she played the title role, and, in 2005, Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors for the OUDS summer tour to Japan, starring alongside Harry Lloyd.

Jones was encouraged to take up acting by her father, and later, by her uncle, the actor Michael Hadley. After the first series of The Worst Witch, Jones was replaced by Katie Allen. When Weirdsister College began in 2001, Jones returned as Hallow. During the shooting of Weirdsister College she was just seventeen, lived in a flat in Richmond and had a private tutor to get her through her 'A' levels Her longest and probably best known role overall was on the BBC Radio 4 soap opera The Archers, where she played Emma Carter (who is now played by Emerald O'Hanrahan).

She took the leading role in the 2007 ITV adaptation of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and made her stage debut in Polly Stenham's That Face at the Royal Court Theatre in April 2007.

In 2008, she appeared in the films Brideshead Revisited and Flashbacks of a Fool, the Doctor Who episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp" and a revival of Enid Bagnold's The Chalk Garden at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London between 5 June and 2 August 2008.

In May 2009, she performed in a rehearsed reading of Anthony Minghella's Hang Up at the High Tide Festival.

Jones plays the role of Julie in Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's Cemetery Junction (2010). She will also be appearing in the forthcoming films Soulboy and Julie Taymor's big screen adaptation of The Tempest as Miranda. She will star in the noir Science-Fiction thriller The Scribbler which was directed by Jake West.

She currently lives in Bethnal Green, in London's East End, with her long-term boyfriend, Ed Fornieles, who is an artist.