A year on an AFS exchange to France at 18 gave her galloping Francophilia, so after finishing her degree at the University of Otago, she headed back to work as an English assistante in a French high school.
When she decided to learn the guitar, her former host sister put her in touch with luthier Laurent Huchard, a lovely man who not only played guitars, but also made them.
She did not just learn guitar from him, but fell in love and married him and had two beautiful daughters, Mila and Gabrielle.
Now, they live half the year in Laurent's hometown in Oyonnax, where he makes guitars and Emily sources beautiful French antiques.
The other half of the year is spent in Emily's hometown, Dunedin, selling the French goodies and running guitar-making classes.
So far, so romantic.
The reality is a little grittier.
Home in France is the glorious Valley of Plastic not far from the Swiss border.
Laurent's family owned a small plastics factory making combs and hair accessories and this is now the house and office.
The 600sq m building houses not only Laurent, Emily, Mila and baby Gabrielle, but the stripping, gluing and storing rooms necessary for their businesses.
Emily's glamour business involves a lot of lugging of heavy, dirty furniture and the million-and-one strange bits and pieces she gets her hands on back to the house, where it gets tidied up and sorted and packed ready for its trip to New Zealand.
Back in sunny Dunedin, the couple set up shop in their pretty villa near Moana Pool about early December.
Few locals do not know about Simply French, and the first month back is very busy for Laurent and Emily with all their customers keen to inspect the new French stock.
While Emily looks after the customers, Laurent slaves away in the laundry.
Well, what used to be the laundry.
He has turned it into a workshop of a different kind, and out of the former laundry come the most exquisite guitars.
Although these are utterly stunning, I lost my heart to a tiny kauri ukulele that he was making from a recycled church pew.
But Emily should be nervous. I saw Laurent eying up a rather battered kauri door in their villa.
Ukuleles do not keep out those southerlies as well as doors.
While their original plan was to live permanently in New Zealand, Laurent's business suffers here.
He is really only interested in making guitars for musicians, not collectors, and while he has plenty of musicians in France who are successful enough to afford the $NZ5000 for a Laurent Huchard handmade guitar, there are not quite as many here.
Many people have attended his guitar-making courses here and in France, where for $NZ2600 in 10 full days, you can own your own handmade guitar.
