After earning BA, MA, and PhD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Danien worked at the Penn Museum, where she conducted and published research, developed exhibits, initiated public outreach events including "Member's Nights" and an annual "Maya Weekend", and later, after retirement, volunteered as a docent.
As a philanthropist, she founded a scholarship program called Bread Upon the Waters which gave women over age thirty the opportunity to pursue and complete undergraduate degrees at the University of Pennsylvania through part-time study.
"[2][3] Born in New York City July 17, 1929,[4] Elin Corey Danien became interested in Central America and its pre-Columbian culture when she hitchhiked to Mexico as a young woman and stayed in the region for two years.
[9][2] Danien earned an Anthropology PhD for her 1998 dissertation entitled "The Chama Polychrome Ceramic Cylinders in the University of Pennsylvania Museum", which she wrote under the supervision of Robert J. Sharer.
This volume gathered stories that anthropologists and folklorists had recorded in Guatemala in the early twentieth century, including tales of the Popul Vuh, the ancient Maya creation legend.
The program took its name from a verse from the Bible – Ecclesiastes 11:1, "Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days" – a statement often understood to mean that doing good for and sharing with others reaps rewards of its own.