Her father, Arthur Bevan Wheeler, Distinguished Flying Cross, was a New Zealand-trained bomber pilot who had worked in the New Zealand Post Office at Turua before joining the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Her Oxford-born mother Peggy May Wheeler, was a former Wren who worked at Bletchley Park deciphering German communications.
She was founding editor of the Sunday Star newspaper (1987–1993) and New Zealand House & Garden magazine, (1993-1994) and the first woman editor of the New Zealand Listener, (1994–1997). The eldest of four daughters raised in a small farming community on the edge of the Hauraki Plains. Her father"s family lived at Ngatea on the Hauraki Plains and when he returned from service he went farming nearby at Mangatarata.
Wheeler got her primary schooling at Mangatarata School – a one teacher country school with around a dozen pupils when she started her education – and then as a boarder at Diocesan High School (1960-1964).
She did a Bachelor of Arts degree at Auckland University (1965-1967) a teaching diploma at the Secondary Teachers College, Auckland (1968) and then taught English, history and social studies at Wellington East Girls High School (1969). Wheeler joined the New Zealand Herald as a general news reporter (1971-1975), spent a year in Melbourne as assistant press secretary to the Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne, (1976) was a staff writer at the New Zealand Woman"s Weekly (1978-1984), news reporter at the Auckland Star (1985), and then Auckland Star features editor (1986-1987).
As editor of the Sunday Star, she was the second woman to be editor of a metropolitan newspaper – the first was Doctor Judy McGregor, who was editor of the Sunday News and the Auckland Star. She was the first woman editor of the New Zealand Listener, taking over from Terry Snow.
Wheeler maintains an interest in media and is regularly called upon to act as a judge for the Canon Awards and Magazine Publisher"s Association Awards.
In 1997 Wheeler began a health supplements direct marketing company Happy Families Limited with her partner, former talk back radio host and sports journalist Tim Bickerstaff. They began by marketing Nectar Ease honey with added bee venom as a therapeutic remedy for joint and muscle health, and went on to develop a range of honey products under the brand name Honeybalm, including a veterinary line for older dogs and horses with mobility problems. In 1999 they started marketing men"s erectile dysfunction product Herbal Ignite, and prostate health supplement Quup (later to become Prostate PowerFlow)
After Bickerstaff"s death in 2009 Sam Kamani was appointed a director of the new company, Intenza New Zealand Limited, and the Honeybalm range was discontinued.
