Deborah Howard grew up in and around the Chicago area. She has lived and worked in Israel, Louisiana and Minnesota.

Currently Deborah heads the Painting Program at the University of Denver.

Deborah received her BFA in Drawing and Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design and MFA in Painting and Printmaking at University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Deborah's work has been included in exhibitions at the Aspen Art Museum, Regis University in Denver, Mizel Cultural Arts Center in Denver, the Arvada Arts and Humanities Center in Colorado, Peace Museum in Chicago, Tweed Museum in Duluth, Minnesota, Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, City College in New York and the Studio Arts Center International in Florence, Italy.

Her work has been reviewed in the Rocky Mountain News and she has been interviewed on Colorado Public Radio.

Deborah's work is included in private collections throughout the Denver area as well as in Chicago.

Public collections include: Penrose Library at University of Denver, Kaiser Permanente, Rocky Mountain Records and the Elvejem Museum in Madison, Wisconsin. 

Deborah has worked on her project Portraits of Child Holocaust Survivors for five years (2003 - 2008). She has interviewed and drawn twenty-five Survivors in Denver, Chicago and Los Angeles. Recently  drawings from the project were accepted into the permanent collection of the new Holocaust Art Museum at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial  in Jerusalem, Israel.