Hepburn's father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, was a British subject born in Auschitz, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austria-Hungary. He was the son of Victor John George Ruston, who was of British and German-Austrian background, and Anna Juliana Franziska Karolina Wels, who was of German-Austrian origin and born in Kovarce. He was an Honorary British Consul in Semarang, Dutch East Indies, from 1923 to 1924. Joseph was married to Cornelia Bisschop, a Dutch heiress, prior to his marriage to Ella. He later changed his surname to the more "aristocratic" double-barrelled Hepburn-Ruston, perhaps at Ella's insistence, due to mistakenly believing himself descended from James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell.