Dorothy Frances McCrae was the daughter of 19th century Melbourne author and literary figure George Gordon McCrae. She was educated in Melbourne at Rolyat school, Hawthorn (where one of her teachers was Jeannie Taylor, the later Mrs Aeneas Gunn) and then Ruyton school, Kew. In 1907 she married Church of England clergyman, Rev. Charles Elliott Perry, with whom she subsequently had four children. In 1916 McCrae and her husband left Australia for Christchurch, New Zealand, where they lived for almost 20 years. During this period McCrae made only occasional visits to Australia. In 1936 she and her husband returned to live in Sydney, however both died soon afterwards.

Over the years McCrae's poems appeared at intervals in a number of newspapers and magazines, both in Australia and New Zealand. During World War I she became well known in Australia for her patriotic selections Soldier, My Soldier! (1914) and The Clear Call (1915).

One of McCrae's brothers, Geoffrey Gordon McCrae, was killed at Fromelles in 1916. Another brother, Hugh McCrae, was a well known 20th century Australian author and literary figure. Her grandmother was the 19th century artist and diarist Georgiana Huntly McCrae,