Born in a Jewish hospital in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn in 1945, David Danois' early life was spent in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Queens. He returned permanently to Brooklyn to attend Pratt Institute's Martin Luther King Fellowship Program. Hired by Restoration while still attending Pratt, Danois worked as the staff architect and later became the vice president of Restoration's large housing rehabilitation program. At the time of the 2008 interview, Danois owned his own architecture firm, Danois Architects, which specialized in design for affordable housing.