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The passage is:
'Penny and Charlie are going to Venice for their honeymoon' Hetty said.
'Venice? How gorgeous! Cried Marina. Suddenly a wave of jealousy swept over her, enveloping her in dark misery. She looked about her.
The source is A Daughter's Duty by Maggie Hope. What does "She looked about her" mean? Why is there a pronoun?
The phrase: "She looked about her" is a very commonly used phrase, almost a fixed or standard phrase. It means:
She looked around the place where she was standing (or sitting or whatever).
The pronouns "her" and "she" refer to the same person in this phrase. In this case to the character "Marina". "She" is the person doing the looking, and "her" indicates where the looking occurred. The phrase "about her" could be replaced by "around herself" or "around her vicinity" or any of several similar phrases, but "about her" is one of the more common ways to express this idea.
