''She has been telling me about this competition since I could remember, saying: `One day you're going to be the Rose of Tralee,''' Ms Fea said.
''This year, she was like, 'Look, I'm getting old, I'm going to die, do it for me'. So I did it for her.''
The Rose of Tralee is a pageant for women of Irish heritage, which Ms Fea has in spades on her mother's side.
''My triple great-grandmother, Mary Clifford, came out from [Ireland] in 1877.''
Her ''triple great-grandfather'', William Egan, had also emigrated from Ireland to New Zealand.
Ms Fea (21) recently graduated from the University of Otago with a degree in psychology and marketing, and was in Wellington this weekend as Otago Rose of Tralee.
She was actually the only woman to try for the pageant in Otago, because Otago ''doesn't have a strong Irish community and doesn't have a society'', so Ms Fea became the de facto Otago Rose of Tralee for the national pageant.
She went to the Southland competition to get ''a feeling for what the competition would be like, so I could practise being interviewed [and] talking on stage''.
She was crowned New Zealand Rose of Tralee at a ball on Saturday night, after a weekend of events.
The weekend was ''quite nerve-racking, but quite fun at the same time''.
''The judges are with you the whole time, because it's more judged on personality than just beauty.''
She was accompanied by her parents, grandmother and brother in Wellington, all of whom will head to Tralee, Ireland with her in August for the international competition.
She and other competitors will get the chance to travel around Ireland before attending a ball at the end of the trip, where the international Rose of Tralee will be announced.
''I've never been [to Ireland] before, so I'm really excited,'' Ms Fea said.
''The whole thing gets televised.''
She had heard it was the one of most widely-viewed televised events in Ireland.
The Rose of Tralee office in Ireland said last year's broadcast had reached more than 1.6 million viewers.
