Taking their name from a fictional pop group mentioned in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange (where 'The Heaven Seventeen' are at number 4 in the charts with "Inside"), Heaven 17 formed when Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware split from their earlier group The Human League and formed production company British Electric Foundation (BEF).

BEF’s first recording was a cassette-only album called Music for Stowaways and an LP called Music for Listening To. Shortly after, they recruited their friend and photographer Glenn Gregory on vocals to complete their lineup for Heaven 17. Like The Human League, Heaven 17 heavily used synthesizers and drum machines, the Linn LM-1 programmed by Ware particularly contributing to their signature sound.

Session musicians were used for Bass and Guitar (John Wilson) and Grand Piano (Nick Plytas). They had some minor hits including the early "Play To Win", featured on the album Penthouse and Pavement. Their debut single "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang" from the same album had attracted some attention, becoming a left-wing anthem for a while, and was banned by Mike Reid, a Radio 1 DJ for the BBC, because of its overtly political lyrics, though it still reached #45 in the UK singles chart.

In the interim the band produced two further LPs as BEF. The first being Music of Quality & Distinction featuring Glenn Gregory, Paula Yates, Billy Mackenzie, Paul Jones, Bernadette Nolan and Gary Glitter. The tracks were cover versions of songs that Ware, Marsh & Gregory had grown up listening to.

A second volume was issued in the early 1990s (simply titled Music of Quality & Distinction 2), this time featuring artists such as Scritti Politti's Green Gartside, Terence Trent D'Arby, and Lalah Hathaway.

The second album was Geisha Boys and Temple Girls for the dance troupe Hot Gossip, which used songs formerly recorded by The Human League and Heaven 17 and a track each from Sting and Talking Heads. This has recently been re-released. This album was originally to have been produced by Richard Burgess of Landscape.

Major chart success eluded them until the single "Temptation" (on which they were augmented by vocalist Carol Kenyon, a former backing singer for Isaac Hayes), reached #2 in the UK charts in summer 1983. Other songs from the same album, The Luxury Gap, charted although not as high - "Come Live With Me" reached #5 in the UK, "Crushed By The Wheels of Industry" number 17, and "Let Me Go", #41 in November 1982. The album itself charted at #4, their best ever position.

At the end of 1983, the band (under their BEF guise and assisted by Greg Walsh) helped launch Tina Turner's solo career, producing and providing backing vocals on her debut hit "Let's Stay Together". 1984 saw the release of the moderately successful How Men Are, which reached#12 and featured the Earth, Wind and Fire brass section.

The band also worked on the Band Aid single at the end of 1984, with Gregory supplying vocals alongside Midge Ure and Sting after a personal request from Ure that he attend. However, they did not perform at Live Aid the following year. Heaven 17's first live performance was in 1986 on the UK TV show "The Tube" - though live is pushing the term as Ian was operating a Series IIx Fairlight CMI and a Revox Reel to Reel tape recorder was wizzing away in the background.

Pleasure One (featuring the single "Trouble" - a minor hit in the UK at #51, but a big success in Germany where it reached #17) appeared in 1986 and contained a number of songs that were originally intended for a French film project that never came to be. This was the first Heaven 17 album to not mention production credits for BEF and the abbreviation BEF would not appear again until "Bigger Than America" (1996).

It was followed up in 1988 with Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho (featuring the single "Train of Love in Motion"), although these two albums were poorly received and had little commercial success. The early 1990s were a quiet period for the band and they would not work together as Heaven 17 again until 1996's Bigger Than America.

In the preceding years, Marsh and Ware produced a second BEF album to follow 1982's original Music of Quality and Distinction and Gregory formed the band Ugly. Ware became an in-demand producer, working for the likes of Terence Trent D'Arby, Alison Moyet and Erasure. "Temptation" was remixed and re-released in 1992, reaching number 4 on the UK Singles chart.

2005 saw the release of the long-awaited Before After, which had a much more contemporary dance sound compared to previous albums. A CD of remixes of "Hands Up To Heaven" from the album hit number 6 on the Billboard Magazine US Club Play Chart in May 2006.

In October the same year Virgin issued a greatest hits compilation called Sight and Sound, which included a previously-unheard version of "Temptation" with spoken vocals by an unknown student from Germany whom the band met in 1982. It had been discovered on 1-inch tape by Glenn Gregory's mother and remastered by Simon Heyworth.