Her father Gene Di Novi is a musician who has worked with Doris Day, Lena Horne and Peggy Lee. When she was three years old, her family moved to Los Angeles from New York, where Gene Di Novi made music for the TV shows of Danny Thomas, Dick Van Dyke and Andy Griffith. In the late 1960s, the family moved again, this time to Toronto in Canada, and while there Denise's mother died of cancer.
Di Novi studied communications at Simmons College, Massachusetts, and received a degree in journalism. After working as a copy editor at the National Observer and staff writer for Canada AM, she became a reporter for Toronto's Citytv, but quit in 1980, and took a job as a unit publicist for Final Assignment, a film shooting in Toronto starring Genevieve Bujold. She then worked for producer Pierre David for four years.
Her first film production credit was Heathers in 1989. From 1989–1992, Di Novi ran Tim Burton Productions and produced Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, Cabin Boy, and Ed Wood, alongside Tim Burton.
She has two sons, Mac and Nicholas, and she is married to film director Christopher Taylor
