Hannie J. Ostendorf Voyles was born and raised in the Netherlands to a Catholic father and a Jewish mother. She was a schoolgirl during the war and lived in the same neighborhood and attended the same school as Anne Frank, until the Ostendorf family moved to a different neighborhood.

Amsterdam was liberated on May 5, 1945, and four years later Voyles graduated from the Montessori High School. Days later, she emigrated to America. Within five years, she was married and had a family. She finished her studies in English and Linguistics, then qualified for a faculty position at the California State University. Years later, when a new community college was built in Butte County, California, Voyles jumped at the chance to be involved in building that institution.

As a college teacher in Northern California, she realized that her students lacked exposure to the world. She immediately began to organize study tours for them and conducted some twenty tours for college students and their families. In 1995, during the 50-year commemoration of the Holocaust, she played a key role in bringing Miep Gies—who was instrumental in hiding Anne Frank and her family—to Chico, California, to attend the opening performance of THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, presented by the Performing Arts department of her college.