[1] Vane-Kirkman's career in the media began with a secretarial job on the Daily Express in London where she worked for the motoring correspondent Basil Cardew and the industrial editor Sir Trevor Evans.

She became a reporter and then women's editor for the local Hendon Times where she met her husband Peter Kirkman whom she married in 1965 becoming Dena Vane-Kirkman.

She applied the same formula at Living magazine where she moved it away from housekeeping and cookery towards features on relationships, sex, and women's health.

[1][2] According to Ronnie Lessem, however, her attempts to include business coverage were thwarted by men who saw traditional women's subjects as more profitable.

[3] After Living was sold, she moved to New York where she edited Woman's World in the 1980s, a magazine of Bauer Publishing, and then First for Women.