Fleur Beale is the author of many award-winning books for children and young adults, best known for her novel I am not Esther which has been published worldwide.

Beale was one of six children of a dairy farmer Cedric Corney and of a teacher and author Estelle Corney (née Cook). She was born in Inglewood, Taranaki, New Zealand, on the farm where her father was born. Beale grew up in the town before attending Victoria University, Wellington and Christchurch Teachers' Training College, where she met her husband. Since 1985 she has taught at Melville High School in Hamilton, Waikato and in Wellington. Beale's first stories were written for the children's radio programme Grandpa's Place. Her first book was a small reader and picture book for young children and she started to write for teenagers in 1993. Her stories often involve troubled adolescents engaged in outdoor activities.

Beale was a finalist in the Aim Children's Book Awards (junior fiction) and her 1998 novel I am not Esther was shortlisted for the senior fiction section of the 1999 New Zealand Post Children's Awards. In 1999 she was awarded the Children's Writing Fellowship at Dunedin College of Education and quit teaching to write full time. Her 2001 novel Ambushed was a finalist for the Junior Fiction section of the 2002 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards. Her 2004 account of how an indigenous girl discovers how her education can save her tribal lands (My Story A New Song in the Land. The Writings of Atapo, Pahia, c.1840) received a Notable Book award in 2005 as did Walking Lightly.