Beverley Harper was born in Australia. In 1967 she travelled to Africa, intending to spend one year there. She stayed twenty, returning to settle in Australia in 1988. Her memories of Africa have provided the inspiration for her best-selling novels and she visited that continent for research purposes once a year.

Beverley Harper died of cancer in 2002. She rests at peace in the Africa she so loved. Her ashes lay by the Boteti River in Botswana, below a lodge called Leroo-la-Tau, which means footprints of lion.

She left a draft of her final novel, FOOTPRINTS OF LION, which was lovingly completed by her husband, Robert Harper, and Peter Watt.