June Rosemary Whitfield was born in Streatham, London in 1925. She made her first stage appearance aged three after her mother enrolled her at a dance school. Whitfield attended Streatham High School and in 1944 Whitfield graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with a diploma. In 1955, June Whitfield married Tim Aitchison and they had one daughter, Suzy, who became an actress.

In 1951, June Whitfield had her first credited television role in The Passing Show, and she joined the London cast of South Pacific. Her big break came in 1953 when she replaced the emigrating Joy Nichols on the hit Muir and Norden radio comedy Take It From Here, co-starring Jimmy Edwards and Dick Bentley.

She played 'Eth', fiancee of the terminally dim Ron Glum (played by Bentley) in the portion of the show known as "The Glums". During the next 15 years Whitfield had many small roles on television, including appearances in The Tony Hancock Show, Hancock's Half Hour, Dixon of Dock Green, Arthur's Treasured Volumes, The Arthur Askey Show, Faces of Jim, Hancock, The Benny Hill Show, Steptoe and Son and Frankie Howerd.

Her best remembered work with Tony Hancock is as the nurse in the opening scene of "The Blood Donor" (Hancock 1961). In 1959 Whitfield appeared in Carry On Nurse, the first of her three appearances in the main run of that film series.

In 1966, Whitfield gained her first starring role, in the sitcom Beggar My Neighbour playing Rose Garvey. The year after Beggar My Neighbour finished in 1968, Whitfield then appeared on Scott On... for six years until 1974. This started a working relationship with Terry Scott that would last until 1987.

During Scott On. .. she had also appeared in The Best Things In Life, The Goodies, The Dick Emery Show, Bless This House and The Pallisers. In 1972 she appeared in the Bless This House film, with Terry Scott as her husband, and Carry On Abroad, followed by an appearance in 1973 in Carry On Girls.

In 1974, Whitfield starred in a Comedy Playhouse sitcom pilot called Happy Ever After alongside Terry Scott. Later that year a first series of this was made, and it continued for five series until 1979. That year they appeared together in the first series of Terry and June.

Happy Ever After and Terry and June were very similar programmes, with only a change of surname, from Fletcher to Medford, and a new house and family. Both sitcoms had Scott and Whitfield as a suburban middle-class married couple. Terry and June ran for 65 episodes until 1987.

Five years later in 1992, Julian Clary created Terry and Julian, a Channel 4 sitcom which spoofed the title of Terry and June, and Whitfield made an appearance in one episode. During the eight-year run of Terry and June, Whitfield also appeared in It Ain't Half Hot Mum and Minder.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Whitfield also appeared in a series of television advertisements, created for Birds Eye by advertising art director Vernon Howe, featuring the concluding voice-over line: ".. it can make a dishonest woman of you!".

During the 1980s, June Whitfield went back to radio. From 1984 she appeared with Roy Hudd on the satire programme The News Huddlines, which finished in 2001. On The News Huddlines she often impersonated people, and was known for her impersonation of the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

During the 1980s and 1990s, June Whitfield made several stage appearances, including in a revival of An Ideal Husband and the pantomime Babes in the Wood. In 1982, Whitfield was made a Freeman of the City of London and was made an OBE in 1985.