She was educated in the public schools of Oakland before going to New York City to study classical dancing. Later she went to Paris, France, and studied with the most notable dance instructors. She developed a great proficiency in the art. She became a cabaret dancer and was discovered by a talent agent.
Her ability as a professional dancer and her talent in playing emotional roles before the camera enhanced her popularity among Hollywood directors. Her debut as a star in came in The Broadway Madonna (1922). She was active throughout the 1920s, playing in The Virgin (1924), The Supreme Test (1923), An Enemy of Men (1925), Cleopatra (1928), and Tanned Legs (1929). After recovering from two broken arms suffered in a 1930 car accident, she played numerous film roles in low-budget silent movies and early sound motion pictures. Often she appeared as a femme fatale. In 1929 Dorothy played opposite Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in The Iron Mask. Her film career declined with the coming of sound and by the end of the 1930s she was performing mostly in Buck Jones Westerns. After spending the majority of her film career as as among the brightest stars of Columbia Pictures, Dorothy free-lanced for about a year and a half. She returned to movies in 1933 with a part in Lovable Liar with Buck Jones and Arthur Rankin. Her last role was 'June Caldwell' in The Cowboy and the Kid (1936).
In November 1935 Dorothy was selected as the first of twenty film stars to pose for portraits of beautiful women. The portraits were to be presented in the Salon d' Art exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1936.
Miss Revier was married twice. One marriage was to director Harry J. Revier and the other to commercial artist William Pelayo. Both unions ended in divorce. In February 1923 the actress and Harry Revier were parents of a three-year-old baby. At the time the director was charged by his second wife, Mrs. Betty Revier, with bigamy. Betty was a former actress who filed the suit in a San Jose, California courtroom. Dorothy met Harry Revier in the summer of 1921 at Taft's old Farrell street cafe. He was filming Life's Greatest Question and was seeking a dancer. He offered her a role and she accepted.
Dorothy Revier died at the age of 89 at Queen of Angels-Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center and was interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Hollywood Hills, California, USA. She had been a resident of West Hollywood.
