A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a collection of interconnected sensor nodes that communicate wireless to gather information from their environment. However, the existing technique has high delay, low network lifetime and energy consumption. To address these issues, a novel HO–WO Hybrid Optimization for Improving Energy Efficiency and Extending Network Lifetime in Wireless Sensor Networks (HWEL). Initially, C Means clustering is employed in the proposed framework to improve cluster formation. The hippopotamus optimization algorithm (HO) provides an effective way for cluster head selection based on node degree, distance and residual energy. Consequently, the wombat optimization algorithm (WO) is utilized to find a routing path between the source and the destination over the cluster head. The proposed model was compared to existing techniques on energy consumption, throughput, Alive Node, delay and network lifetime are used. The proposed HWEL achieves the higher network lifetime by 95.8% for proposed and 48.17 %, 39.17 % and 20.25% than the LEACH, EBPT-CRA and LCPSO-CRP approaches.