Rosina Doyle Wheeler's mother was the women's rights advocate Anna Wheeler, the daughter of the Rev. Nicholas Milley Doyle, a Church of Ireland clergyman, Rector of Newcastle, while her father was Francis Massey Wheeler, an Anglo-Irish landowner. One of her mother's brothers, Sir John Milley Doyle (1781–1856), led British and Portuguese forces in the Peninsular War and the War of the Two Brothers.