Donald Bowen was born in London in 1917 and educated at Sloane School, Chelsea. Prior to the Second World War he studied at Chelsea School of Art and with Austin Osman Spare. He served in the army from 1940 to 1947. Afterwards he studied at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting 1947-1951, taking his National Diploma of Design at the end of that period. Between 1952 and 1953 he was employed as a draughtsman in the stained-glass studios of Whitefriars Glass Works, where he was mainly engaged on the heraldic windows for the Great Hall, Lincoln's Inn. Bowen was appointed to the staff of the Commonwealth Institute, Kensington, in 1953, where he served as curator of the art gallery until his retirement in 1979.

From his student days to the present, Bowen has maintained his art practice, and from the 1950s has concentrated on topographical drawing, creating a large body of work documenting landscape and townscape both in and around London and abroad.