She had featured roles in such films as Best Foot Forward (1943), The Thin Man Goes Home (1944), Scene of the Crime (1949) and Summer Stock (1950), and was voted by exhibitors as the third most likely to be a "star of tomorrow'" in 1944.

After a long absence from the screen, DeHaven appeared as the love interest of Jack Lemmon in the comedy Out to Sea (1997), also starring Walter Matthau.

Besides being cast as a singer in many of her films, including I'll Get By, So This Is Paris and The Girl Rush, and performing numbers in many of her movies, DeHaven sang with the bands of Jan Savitt and Bob Crosby and at one time had her own nightclub act.

She was one of the numerous celebrities who appeared in the all-star box office flop, Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976), and guest-starred in television series, including Robert Montgomery Presents; Appointment with Adventure (episode entitled "The Snow People"); The Guy Mitchell Show; Johnny Ringo (as Rosemary Blake in "Love Affair"); The Rifleman; Wagon Train; The Lloyd Bridges Show; Flipper; Marcus Welby, M.D.

Later that year, she was cast in the short-lived police drama Nakia.,[5] She also appeared with Horace Heidt on his "Swift Family Show Wagon" in 1955.

[10] DeHaven died on July 30, 2016, in Las Vegas of undisclosed causes a week after her 91st birthday while in hospice care after having had a stroke a few months earlier.