DeVore attended segregated schools until she was nine, and then moved to Winston-Salem to live with her mother's brother, John.

In 1989, she was featured in Brian Lanker's I Dream a World, a collection of portraits and biographies of black women who helped change America.

In 1946, determined to create a new market for non-White women in the U.S., DeVore established The Grace Del Marco Agency.

In the agency's early days, it was a stepping stone for countless household names; Diahann Carroll, Helen Williams, Richard Roundtree, Cicely Tyson and others.

Racism was rampant in New York's fashion business and the Grace Del Marco Agency was one of the few places non-White models could gain work.

In 1985, DeVore broadened her enterprise globally to include Swaziland as a client, and published her late husband's newspaper The Columbus Times.