Much of her early childhood was spent overseas, first in Nigeria and the then in the Belgian Congo before returning to New Zealand and completing her secondary education at Auckland Girls' Grammar School.

She was the first in her family to attend university where she studied history and focused on the emergence of trade unions and wrote her MA thesis on the unemployed riots of 1932 during the Great Depression.

In the lead up to the 1975 election she challenged Porirua MP (and pro-life advocate) Gerry Wall for the Labour Party nomination.

She was one member of the "troika" (a group of three female Labour councillors alongside Helene Ritchie and Hazel Bibby) who frequently opposed Fowler around the council table.

[1] Under Fowler's successor as mayor Ian Lawrence, Noonan opposed his decision in 1985 to disallow a petition to force a ratepayers' poll on the issue of water and sewerage and not allow councillors to see it.

In a meeting she asked Lawrence how he reconciled the withholding of the petition given a recent extension of the Official Information Act 1982 to cover local authorities.

[7] In 1987 she turned down the offer to be Labour's candidate at the Otari Ward by-election saying she had insufficient time to be both a councillor as well as fulfill her duties with the Royal Commission on Social Policy, to which she had been recently appointed.