Born in California in 1955,received a BA (Summa Cum Laude) from Yale and a MFA from Indiana University. She taught art at Carlton College, as an Assistant Professor, from 1978-1986, and was a Visiting Professor at Yale in 1983.

Brown has been featured in over 20 one person exhibits around the United States, including at the Mint Museum in Charlotte and the National Academy of Science in Washington. Important group shows in which her work has been featured include those at the University of Rhode Island, Bucknell, and Rutgers Universities, the Kohler Art Center in Wisconsin, the Gibbes Museum in Charleston S.C, The Butler Institute of American Art and the Katonah and Indianapolis Museums of Art.

Museum collections with Deborah Brown's paintings include:
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Fredrick R Weisman Museum of Art, Art Museum of South Texas, Bass Museum of Art, Arkansas Arts Center, Mobile Museum of Art, Jacksonville Museum of Contemporary Art, Orlando Museum of Art, The Art Museum at Florida International University, The Columbia Museum of Art, and the Mississippi Museum of Art.

Putting Brown's Stylistic sophistication aside, one can hardly avoid seeing her as a seeker of truths normally foreign to us; her carefully honed technique, set at the service of this sublime subject matter, extracts exquisite shape from our fears and longings.

Gerrit Henry
Art in America
April 1991