Reagan was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from Marymount Secondary School, Tarrytown, NY in 1958 and briefly attended Marymount University. Her parents also had another daughter, Christine, who died shortly after birth.
Reagan pursued a career in acting in her youth, appearing in films such as Kissin' Cousins (1964) with Elvis Presley.
Reagan spoke on behalf of Republican candidates throughout the country, including twenty appearances alone in 1967 for an unsuccessful Mississippi gubernatorial nominee, Rubel Phillips, a former segregationist who ran that year on a platform of racial moderation.
Reagan was the first son or daughter of a President to be elected cochair of the Republican National Committee, but both of her attempts at election of political office ended in defeat. She ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate from California in 1982 (which was eventually won by Pete Wilson) and in 1992 for California's 36th congressional district.
After her father announced his diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease in 1994, Maureen Reagan became a member of the Alzheimer's Association board of Directors and served as the group's spokeswoman. During her hospitalization for melanoma cancer, Maureen was only floors away from her father, who had suffered a severe fall.
Reagan volunteered with actor David Hyde Pierce, of TV's Frasier, at the Alzheimer's Association. At her funeral on August 19, 2001, Pierce spoke to the gathering at Cathedral of Blessed Sacrament in Sacramento, California, and recalled his friend's tireless devotion to fighting the mind-robbing illness. "When she was given lemons, she did not make lemonade. She took the lemons, threw them back and said, 'Oh, no you don't.'"
