[1] She was first noticed as a chorus-girl by impresario Charles Frohman, who took her to Broadway, where she also worked for William Gillette of "Sherlock Holmes fame", her early career being largely moulded by these two much-older mentors.

After making a few films in Europe, she returned to America, increasingly drawn to the spiritual life, and ended as a recluse, actively avoiding friends and acquaintances.

In the early 1950s author Daniel Blum interviewed and included her in his book Great Stars of the American Stage, a homage to many theater performers, some dead, some still living at the time, like Doro.

[4] Doro was described by drama critic William Winter as "a young actress of piquant beauty, marked personality and rare expressiveness of countenance.

"[5] Lowell Thomas, the traveler, writer, and broadcaster, knew Doro well, saying that "her fragile-looking type of pulchritude caused her to be cast in usually insipid, pretty-pretty roles."

"[7] Like many other young women, she started out in the chorus in musical comedy productions, finally performing as a single character in a program in San Francisco in 1903.

She caught the eye of Frohman, who saw in her distinct possibilities for stardom and cast her as Lady Millicent in James M. Barrie's Little Mary, which opened at the Empire Theater on January 4, 1904.

Later that year the legendary Mrs. G. H. Gilbert — who with John Drew, Ada Rehan and James Lewis had been one of Augustin Daly's "Big 4," but who had spent decades supporting bigger stars—was finally given a starring vehicle of her own, Clyde Fitch's Granny.

The following January, Doro created the title role of Friquet at the Savoy, and it was William Collier's company, performing The Detective, that took her to London later that year.

Doro's stage career ended with Frohman's death on the Lusitania in 1915, after which she made eighteen motion pictures and achieved several milestones, one of them being her appearance in the first presentation of 3-D films in front of a paying audience.