Jean Howard is the professional pseudonym of American voice actress Julie Ann Taylor, whose career in the animation and video game industries began in the late 1980s. Born in Orange County, California, her interest in voice work started at a young age when she chose to play the Wicked Witch in a grade school production of The Wizard of Oz specifically to perform the character's voice. She later attended the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television, and began formal voice-over studies in 1995. Over the course of her career, she has been credited under several alternative names, including Julie Pickering and Cricket Brown, with Jean Howard being the best-known alias for her work in English anime dubs during the early 2000s.

She is perhaps most widely recognized for her role as Mutsumi Otohime in the English dub of the Love Hina franchise. She voiced the character across multiple installments, including the original Love Hina television series, the holiday specials Love Hina X'mas Special - Silent Eve and Love Hina Spring Special - I Wish Your Dream, as well as the final OVA series Love Hina Again. Her performance as the gentle, accident-prone Mutsumi became a key role in her career and a notable part of the franchise's English adaptation.

Beyond Love Hina, Jean Howard's voice can be heard in a wide array of other anime series from the same era. Her notable roles include Milly Ashford in Code Geass, Ai Tanabe in Planetes, Taiga Fujimura in Fate/stay night, Ayumi Yamada in Honey and Clover, Boota in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and Souseiseki in Rozen Maiden. She also had a significant role in the English dub of Vandread as Meia Gisborn, though she was credited under the name Julie Pickering for that series. In addition to her extensive work in anime, she has performed voice work for numerous video game franchises. Her game credits include Linca in the Atelier series, Cordelia in Fire Emblem Warriors, and Karol Capel in Tales of Vesperia.

Recurring collaborations have been a hallmark of her career. She frequently worked with voice director Wendee Lee, who directed the English dub for Love Hina Again and other projects. Her career is also marked by consistent collaboration with other voice actors of the Los Angeles anime dub community, including Barbara Goodson, Mona Marshall, and Dorothy Melendrez, with whom she appeared regularly in Bang Zoom Entertainment productions. As an actress known for a youthful and upbeat vocal quality, Jean Howard has maintained a prolific career with over one hundred credits in anime and video games, establishing herself as a familiar presence in English-language voice acting from the early 2000s through the present day.