Donna Goodacre is of Waikato Tainui descent and is a retired high school/correctional centre/vocational school English and Foreign Languages teacher. Her career spanned some forty years in New Zealand and Australia. She started her first novel, Finding Miriama, in 2018, when family members convinced her that her ancestors' story, if told well, could make an interesting read.

Five years of historical research later, coupled with a little poetic licence and imagination, it was completed. The sequel, Of Greenstone and Violins, published in 2025, took only one year after her retirement from full-time teaching. The third in the Our Unbroken Spirits series, The Spirit Remains, was released the following year.

Donna still divides her time between her birthplace in Tauranga, New Zealand, and Brisbane, Australia, where her close family lives. In both places she can be found on a beach or somewhere small and intimate, listening to live jazz.