Bonita was born and grew up in New South Wales, where her father was the head of a mining rescue service.
[1] The couple went to London together in 1970, where Beaglehole trained at Guys and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and then to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where Bonita earned a Masters in Public Health.
[2] Bonita completed a PhD titled The epidemiology and management of cerebrovascular disease at the University of Auckland in 1985.
[4][5] In 2006 Bonita was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to medicine.
[6] In 1996 she was made an Honorary Doctor of Medicine at Umea University, where she is on the Advisory Board of the Aging and Life Course Programme.