Her great-grand uncle was Grand Vizier Halil Rifat Pasha, founder of the almshouse (Turkish: Darülaceze) in Istanbul and commissioner of the İzmir Clock Tower.
[3][4][5][6] Günseli Başar completed her secondary education at Erenköy Girls High School in Istanbul.
[7] While studying sculpture at the Fine Arts Academy in Istanbul,[2] Günseli participated at a beauty pageant organized by the newspaper Cumhuriyet, and won the title Miss Turkey 1951 on October 13, 1951.
[2][9] She dropped out of her arts education, and at the age of 23, married Mehmet Kutsi Beğdeş, a charitable businessman.
After only one year of travelling across the country to write her column, she was involved in a traffic accident in which she was seriously injured.