A teacher and author, Heini Gruffudd has spent his life teaching Welsh to children and adults, and from 1990 to 2003, he was a lecturer in the University of Swansea's Department of Adult and Continuing Education. After taking early retirement from the department, he has continued to work as a translator and a language consultant. Gruffudd was raised in the city, a son of the writers and Egyptologists Kate Bosse Griffiths, the first Curator of the University's Egyptian Centre collection, and J Gwyn Griffiths, who taught Classics and Egyptology in Swansea University for over thirty years.