Donna Alison Bartley, also known as D.A. Bartley, is a member of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, which indicates that her ancestors settled in Utah before the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869. Bartley's family has a deep-rooted history with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, tracing back to the church's earliest converts. Bartley was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, where her father was studying linguistics at the time. When she was two, her family moved back to Ogden, Utah, where she spent her formative years. At the age of ten, Bartley's family relocated to France, and the following year, they moved to Germany. Bartley's family returned to Salt Lake City, where she attended high school.
Bartley's love for travel and exploration led her to attend Boston University, where she spent her junior year abroad in Leningrad, USSR, in 1991. She then moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1992, and spent the following summer in Paris, feigning French studies while indulging in black coffee and people-watching at sidewalk cafés. After completing her undergraduate studies, Bartley pursued a Ph.D. in political science and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Her doctoral dissertation focused on how countries used the concept of sovereignty in legal disputes. Bartley then moved to New York City with her husband, where she practiced law and wrote academic papers as a research scholar. Bartley, her husband, and their teenage children currently reside on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.