The 53-year-old said yesterday it was too early to announce her plans for the school.
Mrs Carter, at present deputy principal of Rotorua Girls' High School, will take the helm at Queen's High School at the end of September.
She was selected by the Queen's High School board of trustees recently to replace present principal Julie Anderson.
News of Mrs Carter's selection was announced to staff yesterday.
Mrs Carter said she was looking forward to returning to the south, having been born and educated in Timaru.
''I'm elated, absolutely elated,'' she said.
''I'm looking forward to forging really good relationships with King's High School, and working and being principal in an all-girls school.''
Mrs Carter started her teaching career relatively late after spending much of her early life working for the Sport Tasman Trust.
She began teaching 16 years ago at Timaru Girls' High School, when she realised ''if I wanted to have a say in education, I needed to be in education''.
''I wanted to have a say on the direction of where I thought education should be going.''
Since then, she has taught at Tweedsmuir Junior High School in Invercargill, Mt Anglem College (Invercargill), where she was head of physical education for three years, Porirua College and Paraparaumu College before moving to Rotorua Girls' High School, where she has been the deputy principal for the past seven years.
She has a husband, Kevin Carter, and three adult children.
In an ''unplanned and unexpected move'', Mrs Anderson (56) resigned in June this year to take up a newly developed position as Ministry of Education director of education for Otago and Southland.
Mrs Anderson finishes at the end of this month and deputy principal Barbara Agnew will be acting principal until Mrs Carter's arrival on September 29.
