Vanda Heather Salmon was born in Sevenoaks, Kent, 24 July 1924, the daughter of Frederick Salmon and Stephanie Veronica Salmon (née Dalton). She was educated at Walthamstow Hall school.

During the Second World War, she served in South Eastern Command of the War Office in Kent and then worked in a publishing company in London producing trade journals in Russian, Finnish, Norwegian and Turkish. She was employed as a secretary in Conservative Central Office, 1947, and the Conservative Research Department, 1947-50. She transferred to the office of Winston Churchill as one of his personal secretaries, 1950-1, before becoming a private secretary to Nancy Astor, 1951-4. She went on to work for various MPs and Peers at the Palace of Westminster. During the preparations for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, she was given leave of absence to work in the office of the Earl Marshal and later for a short period at Buckingham Palace. She also spent Parliamentary recesses working on a history of Fairlawne in Kent, the home of Peter Cazalet.

She lived for most of her life in her family home at Sevenoaks in Kent and was active in a number of local charities, mainly concerned with disability. She herself lived with mobility issues after contracting polio in 1960. She was a keen gardener, beekeeper, country woman, and animal lover, with a particular interest in horses and dogs and was a breeder of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels and Tibetan Spaniels.

She died at her home in Falkland in Scotland, 19 January 2019.