She made her Broadway debut as Wendy in the musical Peter Pan (1950), for which she won a Theatre World Award.

Henderson also appeared in films such as All I Desire (1953), The Glass Web (1953), Canyon River (1956), and The Wayward Girl (1957).

In 1959 she played secretary and personal assistant Dorothy Brown in the short-lived series World of Giants with co-stars Marshall Thompson and Arthur Franz, and appeared with Gene Barry in Bat Masterson and with Steve McQueen in an episode of Wanted Dead or Alive called "The Hostage."

She then had co-star billing in Back to God's Country with Rock Hudson, and The Glass Web with Edward G. Robinson the same year.

In 1954, she was one of the stars of the drama Naked Alibi along with Sterling Hayden, then two years later in a western, Canyon River.

[13] Beginning in 1957, Henderson suffered from rheumatoid arthritis,[11] "which severely limited and eventually ended her promising acting career" in the 1960s.