Mrs Moneypenny is a former investment banker and has an MBA from the London Business School and a PhD from the University of Hong Kong. She is a visiting professor at Cass, City University Business School, and the chairman of a major educational charity. She is married to a wine merchant who plays a lot of golf; they met at Kai tak airport in 1987 and married in Kennedy Road in 1988. Their three children (ages 21, 16 and 12) are referred to the Cost Centres.

Mrs M began writing for the Financial Times in 1999 while based in Tokyo. Subsequently, she returned to the UK and bought into a small but profitable business in the West End of London, where she was the youngest and worst-groomed of four owner-directors. She later led a management buyout and is now the majority owner. She is the author of Mrs Moneypenny: Survival in the City (2003), Mrs Moneypenny: Email from Tokyo, (2006), Mrs Moneypenny: Credit Crunch (2009). Her column appears every week in the FT Weekend Magazine.