Active primarily in the northern province of the Transvaal (since divided into Gauteng, Mpumalanga, and Limpopo), she is recognized as one of the most influential pioneers of ballet in South Africa.
When Yvonne Mounsey returned to South Africa from New York in 1959, de Villiers joined her in founding the Johannesburg City Ballet, of which she became artistic director in 1961.
[4] During her five-year tenure in this position, she was responsible for bringing the great French ballerina Yvette Chauviré to dance Giselle in theaters in Johannesburg and nearby Pretoria.
[6] She brought Roland Petit and Zizi Jeanmaire to Johannesburg to stage Carmen and Françoise Adret to choreograph a new Cinderella, with Galina Samsova in the title role.
[9] Under de Villiers's aegis, PACT Ballet performed in many major cities of South Africa, including Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Kimberley, Durban, and Cape Town.
A grant from the provincial Department of Arts and Sciences allowed her to tour two groups of company members ("the Midgets" and "the Giants") to perform programs of divertissements and short ballets on stages in school auditoriums and town halls in dorpies on the Highveld and the Bushveld of the vast Transvaal.
[12] For many years, she acted as adjudicator, with Dulcie Howes, of the Choreographic Award sponsored by the South African government,[13] In 1948, de Villiers married Thomas Renwick, an executive with the Otis Elevator Company, with whom she had one child.