Heather Nova was born Heather Allison Frith on July 6th, 1967 in Bermuda. The family on her father's side is one of the oldest in Bermuda, with their history on the island going back 300 years, while her mother is of Canadian origins.

Heather spent most of her childhood with her family (including a sister, Susannah, and a brother, Mishka) on a 40-ft boat built by her father. The Friths lived on the boat among the islands of the Caribbean and crossed the Atlantic ocean several times, while Heather showed an early interest in music, and learned to play the guitar and violin at a young age. "i was lucky that my parents were huge music fans. there was always music playing: bob dylan, joan baez, neil young, roberta flack, the beatles, the stones, van morrison, cat stevens, simon and garfunkel, joni mitchell, etc... so from before i could talk i was listening and singing along to great songwriters. on the boat, the small wind generator only powered the tape deck, that's how much of a priority music was for my parents - we didn't even have a fridge! my mother taped all her records before we moved onto the boat. i remember never knowing the ends of some songs, because she would keep taping until the tape ran out, so for years i never knew how some of the songs would end. i got a guitar when i was 12 and as soon as i learned a few chords i started writing songs." When Heather was 18 she enrolled in college at the Rhode Island School of Design, with the idea of majoring in visual arts. She had a strong interest in painting and the moving image, but also attended classes on poetry and kept writing music, most notably for her short films. It was during this period that she realized that what she really wanted to do was music.

"i guess up until college, i was a closet songwriter, keeping it to myself. then i just started writing a lot, it felt really good, like i was able to articulate something that i couldn't in day to day life; communication is often so complicated. i was taking film making courses. i did films where i would make the soundtracks first, and then do the super 8 films to go with the soundtracks. more and more these films started taking the form of songs and it was this process that made it clear to me that my path was really in music, that music was what i was truly passionate about." After graduating in 1989 Heather moved to London searching for a recording contract and a musical community to fit in to. In London she was discovered by Abbo of Big Cat Records, who produced her first EP Heather Frith, released by Rough Trade in 1990. Heather kept writing more music and playing as many gigs as she could, opening for such acts as The Violent Femmes, The Cranberries and Bob Mould and playing small club gigs in London. Her first album, Glowstars (1993) received the attention of the media and allowed Heather to start touring outside of the UK. At this point she put a band together and one of her London live shows was recorded and released as a live record entitled Blow. In 1994 Heather entered the studio to record what would become her breakthrough album. Oyster received a wide release and was followed by a World tour that ended in 1996, after which Heather returned home to Bermuda to relax, sort things out and write more songs. The follow up to Oyster, Siren, was released in the summer of 1998, to critical and commercial success, and Heather embarked again on a new series of concerts that included several stops on the Lilith Fair tour. On New Year's Eve 1999 Heather Nova played for the first time in her own home country of Bermuda, launching off the Millenium to the sound of Bob Marley's One Love. A nice way for bringing it all back home. In 2000 Heather started working on new material and toured Europe to promote her live album Wonderlust. Also, her rendition of the classic song Gloomy Sunday climbed to the top of the German charts. The song was included in Heather's subsequent studio album South in 2001. After another massive tour in promotion of South, Heather moved back to Bermuda permanently, and started working on a 'stripped down project'. Storm came out in 2003, once again entering the charts in several european countries and gaining great response from fans and media.