Duggie Fields was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire. His parents were Henry Field and his wife Edna (née Rosenthal). He grew up in the garrison town of Tidworth where his father owned a pharmacy, and later in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. He first came to notice in 1958, when he was 14, in the Summer Exhibition at the Bladon Gallery, Hurstbourne Tarrant, while he was attending the nearby Andover Grammar School.

Fields briefly studied architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic before studying at the Chelsea School of Art for four years from 1964. He left with a scholarship that took him on his first visit to the United States, in 1968.