Perhaps she is best known for her roles as Miss Adelaide in the 1976 revival of Guys and Dolls; Lillie Belle Barber on the CBS television soap opera The Young and the Restless, in which she played from 1990 until she died in 1994.

[citation needed] In 1949, Donaldson, then aged 21, launched her career as a nightclub singer, booking gigs throughout New York City.

In 1975, Donaldson began her acting career on Broadway and was most famous for portraying the loveless chorus line dancer Miss Adelaide, opposite Robert Guillaume, in an all-black revival of Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls which premiered in 1976.

Before her lengthy recurring role on "The Young and the Restless," she had played Dr. Paulina Ravelle on General Hospital regularly from 1987 to 1989, who strove to prevent her daughter, Simone, from marrying the white Dr. Tom Hardy.

Donaldson died of cancer at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, California, on November 22, 1994, at 66 years old.