Clara D. Davidson was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1874 but by 1889 had moved to New York City and was taking classes at Cooper Union's Woman's Art School. She later studied under Arthur Wesley Dow at the Art Students League before setting off to Europe for additional study circa 1900. In Paris, she was taught by Alphonse Mucha and Jacques-Émile Blanche. After four years abroad, she returned to the United States.

Though Davidson exhibited widely and earned complimentary reviews of the paintings she showed in such venues as the National Academy of Design in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Wadsworth Athenaeum, she was, until recently, primarily known for her illustrations in magazines and young women's books. Town and Country and The Saturday Evening Post featured Davidson cover designs.

Davidson's works are in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Alphonse Mucha Association, Prague as well as in the collections of the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and the Rockford Art Museum in Illinois.