[1] She is widely recognised as one of the most influential historians and researchers on the United Arab Emirates, its tribes and its social and political development leading up to the establishment of the UAE as a nation.
[2] While at school Heard-Bey worked in the UK as an Au pair, during which time she met and embarked on a relationship with English student David Heard.
[3] Moving to Abu Dhabi to be with Heard, she studied Arabic and worked on a shortened version of her doctoral thesis, on Berlin politics following World War I, which was published as a book in 1968 by Kohlhammer.
Originally set up in anticipation of border disputes,[4] prior to the foundation of the United Arab Emirates on 2 December 1971, the centre moved out of Qasr Al Hosn in 1998 to its current location near the Sharia Court, and in 2014 was established as the UAE National Archives.
[11] The Frauke Heard-Bey and David Heard collection of documents amassed by the couple over fifty years of research on the history of the Emirates is held at New York University Abu Dhabi.