Heliozelidae are a cosmopolitan family of small, day-flying moths, and include some pest species of commercial crops. Overall, the family is poorly known and lacks a well-resolved phylogeny. Previous molecular and taxonomic work has revealed rich undescribed diversity within the family, particularly in Australia; however, the relationships amongst the major clades or genera were not resolved. We therefore sequenced the transcriptomes of 39 taxa, representing all major genera of Heliozelidae, and seven outgroups representing most other Adeloidea families and the putative sister superfamily, Andesianoidea. The resulting phylogeny, based on the coding sequences of up to 1049 nuclear genes, provides a robust hypothesis for the generic relationships within Heliozelidae. On the basis of this analysis, the genus Plesiozela, previously proposed sister group of all other Heliozelidae, is excluded from the family and transferred to Incurvariidae. Additionally, we incorporated fossil and secondary time calibrations into our phylogeny and estimated that Heliozelidae ancestors first appeared at the beginning of the Late Cretaceous, approximately 95 Mya. Finally, we propose an ancestral biogeographical range hypothesis of the family, based on a combination of our transcriptome data and a previous multigene study including over 100 species. We suggest the origins of the Heliozelidae were in the Australian region, with subsequent expansions to the rest of the world.