Daria Halprin was born in a Jewish family and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, the daughter of San Francisco-based landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and choreographer Anna Halprin (née Schuman),^[1] who, in the 1950s, was one of the Western pioneers of using dance as a healing art. Like her mother, Halprin studied dance, and in the mid 1960s, began acting in film. Her paternal grandmother was Zionist leader Rose Halprin.

In 1968, she appeared in Revolution, a documentary by Jack O'Connell. Shot mainly in San Francisco, the film depicted the counterculture movement and featured a series of interviews with that city’s hippie residents.

Halprin was chosen by director Michelangelo Antonioni for the lead in his second English-language feature, Zabriskie Point.^[2] The film, released in 1970, was a statement on the burgeoning violence in America and the growing rift between the establishment and the counterculture. Following release of the film, with her Zabriskie Point co-star Mark Frechette, Halprin briefly joined self-styled guru Mel Lyman, a former member of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, and his 100-member commune.^[3]

In 1972, Halprin appeared in John Flynn's thriller The Jerusalem File. Also in 1972, she married actor/director Dennis Hopper. The marriage produced one child, Ruthanna Hopper, and the couple divorced in 1976.

In the 1970s, Halprin developed an interest in creative arts therapy. In 1978, she and her mother Anna founded the Tamalpa Institute^[4] and developed the Halprin Process. She has written The Expressive Body in Life, Art and Therapy and Coming Alive: The Creative Expression Method, and she was a contributing author to Foundations of Expressive Arts Therapy.