Denise Meyerson completed a BA at the University of the Witwatersrand, before studying at Oxford, where she graduated with a B Phil and a D Phil in Philosophy. She also holds an LLB (magna cum laude) from the University of Cape Town. She is Professor of Law in Macquarie Law School, which she joined in 2000. Prior to coming to Australia, she taught in the Philosophy Department at the University of Cape Town (1987-1996) and in the Law Faculty at the University of Cape Town (1996-1999), where she held the W P Schreiner Chair of Jurisprudence. She subsequently held an Honorary Professorship in the same Faculty. During her time at Macquarie University, she has been Head of the Department of Law (2003-2006) and Co-Director of the Centre for Legal Governance (2011-2014). She is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law. In 2015 she was appointed as a Research Evaluation Committee member on the Humanities and Creative Arts Panel for ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia). She served as a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts from 2016-2018.

Professor Meyerson researches in the area of law, human rights and justice. She has published extensively in the areas of theoretical and applied jurisprudence, constitutional theory, human rights theory and comparative human rights law. In addition to numerous articles and chapters, she has written several books, including False Consciousness (Clarendon Press, 1991) and Rights Limited: Freedom of Expression and Religion in the South African Constitution (Juta, 1997). Her book, Jurisprudence (Oxford University Press, 2011), won a Highly Commended Award in the Tertiary Scholarly Reference section of the Australian Educational Publishing Awards.