Charles Heaphy was the son of Thomas Heaphy, a watercolourist and miniature painter, and Mary Stevenson, who died shortly after his birth.

Heaphy was briefly educated at the Royal Academy of Art and subsequently employed as draughtsman with the London and Birminghgam Railway Company and later the New Zealand Company.

He arrived in New Zealand at Ship Cove in Queen Charlotte Sound on 18 August 1839 aboard the "Tory" (having boarded it on the 9 May at Plymouth).

Employed with the NZ Company, he joined several expeditions as surveyor as well as draughtsman. It was on these expeditions that he produced some of his best known body of work of geographical watercolours, portrait studies, charts and coastal profiles of New Zealand.

After a failed attempt to settle into farming life in Motueka and some years of poverty in Nelson, Heaphy found employment with the colonial government in Auckland as draughtsman in the Survey Office.

In Auckland, on 30 October 1851, he married Catherine Letitia Churton. They would have no children of their own.

From his position at the Survey office, Heaphy entered a career as a public official, first serving as secretary to Governor Grey in 1853, and later as chief surveyor, a member of the House of Representatives, and several posts in the McLean ministry.

Heaphy is notable as the first man serving with the New Zealand Forces to be awarded the VC.

Victoria Cross held by the Auckland War Memorial Museum, Auckland, New ZealandIt is on display in the New Zealand Wars section of the Scars on the Heart galleries situated on level 2 of the Museum. AWMM