Bernheim was born in
Santa Monica, California, and is a graduate of
Stanford University and
UCLA, the latter of which she received her MBA. She broke into television by submitting a spec script to
Remington Steele, which starred
Stephanie Zimbalist, her friend since childhood. Executive producer Michael Gleason then hired Bernheim on staff, leading to her career as one of the few women writing and producing hour-long, network television dramas in the 1980s and 1990s, including shows like
Quantum Leap,
Crazy Like a Fox,
Houston Knights,
MacGyver,
Renegade and
Tekwar. One of her
Star Trek:Voyager episodes was chosen in 2020 by
The Hollywood Reporter as one of the most memorable in the series' history Her work also includes several forays into animation, writing episodes of the
Men In Black: The Series and
Extreme Ghostbusters cartoons. In 2015, she co-produced and wrote the acclaimed PBS documentary feature
Little House On The Prairie: The Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder. She was the executive producer of the hit Hallmark series
When Calls the Heart from 2015 to 2017, the writer-producer of several Hallmark movies (including ''I'll Be Home For Christmas
and Royal Hearts'') and in 2019 co-wrote & co-created the network's
Mystery 101 series of movies with
Lee Goldberg. Most recently, Bernheim co-wrote and co-produced the 2019 Netflix movie
The Princess Switch starring
Vanessa Hudgens, as well as a sequel,
The Princess Switch: Switched Again, that was scheduled for release for Christmas 2020. In 2025, she wrote & created ''You're Killing Me
(fka Allie & Andi
), a new six-episode mystery series starring Brooke Shields, Amalia Williamson, and Tom Cavanagh that will air on AMC/Acorn in early 2026. Lee Goldberg, with whom she co-created and co-wrote Mystery 101'', is also a writer/producer on the series . ==Personal life==