Dorothy Woodhead Brown was born in Houston, Texas and educated at Stanford University and at UCLA, where she received a bachelor's degree in art. She taught first at the Barnsdall Art Center and from 1947 until her retirement in 1969 in the art department at UCLA. Still earlier in her career, she had also been a feature writer for Script Magazine and from that time on continued to actively write and publish on art subjects.

Dorrie, as she was affectionately known to her many friends and associates, was ranked among the foremost women painters on the West Coast, but she also enjoyed a national reputation as an artist. During her long professional career she had some thirty one-man shows, participated in at least thirty-six invitational exhibitions and forty juried shows, and was the recipient of twelve purchase prizes and awards. Following her retirement from UCLA, she organized a one-man show of her work which toured the country for over a year. In 1956 Dorrie received The Woman of the Year in Art honor from the Los Angeles Times. She actively participated in many professional art associations including, preeminently, the National California Watercolor Society, serving as its first woman president; the American Watercolor Society; and the Los Angeles Art Association. She lectured extensively on a wide range of art subjects. To satisfy her own creative needs she studied and gathered extensive research materials during her numerous trips to Europe and the Orient as well as in this country, including Alaska and Mexico.

Although she was primarily committed to painting, she was also deeply involved in many other interests on a professional level: poetry, teaching, and the development of her art collection. She valued many friends and maintained an extensive correspondence with them. Above all she had a deep love for nature--especially the sea--but all life forms served as the basic sources for her creative work in all media. Very important to her, too, was her husband, Harold Austin Brown, with whom she shared fifty years of marriage until his death in December 1972.

Source: cdlib.org (obituary from the University of California publication, 1976)