Dorothy Crozier studied history at Melbourne University in the late 1930s and worked as a cataloguer and bibliographer, and taught history at Melbourne University. She took up an ANU scholarship in 1948 to study colonial administration in the London School of Economics, and attended a course by Raymond Firth and Ian Hogbin on Anthropology in the Pacific. Crozier began fieldwork in Tonga, May 1950-July 1951 on a survey of social services in Tonga. Crozier joined the Department of Pacific History in the Research School of Pacific Studies at the ANU as a Research Assistant surveying and listing Western Pacific High Commission (WPHC) records left behind in Suva following the WPHC's move to Honiara. She then worked as an Archivist with the WPHC until October 1958, later returning to London in 1961 to attend the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. Crozier lectured in History at Victoria University, Wellington in the mid-1960s, and took up a Visiting Fellowship in the Department of Pacific History at the ANU from September 1971-September 1973 to complete her work on Mariner's Tonga. She lectured on European History at Melbourne University 1976-77 before retiring.