Edith Dorothy Dunn was born in Surrey Hills, Melbourne in 1887. She was educated at Miss James' Surrey Hills School and Ormiston Girl's School. She was a trainee nurse at the Royal Melbourne Hospital before entering the Melbourne Working Men's College (now RMIT) where she gained a diploma in photography in 1907. Between 1908 and 1919 she worked as a commercial photographer spending some of that time at the Alexander Photographic Studio in Bendigo, as well as working in studios in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Launceston, Yarrawonga, Horsham, Ararat and Victor Harbour. Dunn is regarded as one of the first female commercial photographers in Australia. The family had connections with photographer Alfred Lomer and it is known that Dunn visited his studio in Sydney on a number of occasions when a child. In 1914 she became a member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1919 she married stock and station agent John Albert Freeman. Dunn was the niece of Edward J Dunn, goldfields geologist, anthropologist and traveller who extensively mapped the Bendigo goldfields.