Betty Higgins is an entrepreneur from Papua New Guinea (PNG) who developed and runs a trout farm and hotel in the Mount Wilhelm area.
There she met an expatriate Englishman who, learning of her story, agreed to pay her tuition for the remainder of her high school years.
The couple had a daughter but the relationship broke down because of the large number of her relatives who expected to stay with them and because of her husband's substance abuse.
[2][3] Her second husband, Ken Higgins, an engineer, helped finance several businesses that she set up in Yandera, including buying coffee.
In the 1990s, together with her husband, Higgins bought 40 hectares of land close to the village of Kegesugl in the foothills of Mount Wilhelm.
She went to Tumut in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales, Australia to observe a successful trout farm.
It took a long time to clear, affecting both her business and those of other entrepreneurs in the area, such as a seed potato producer, with the only way in and out being by plane.
As the first woman from her area to run for office, she encountered prejudice from both men and women for acting "like a man" and putting herself too much in the public eye.