Carey was born on February 26, 1943, in Annapolis, Maryland, where her father was working as a wrestling instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy. Her family soon moved to Rochester, Minnesota, so that her father could continue his medical studies. At an early age Michele proved to be a piano prodigy; she won a national contest at the Chicago Music Festival at age 13, and performed with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra.
Carey enjoyed success as a model, but was more interested in acting. Aided by her beauty and trademark long, wild hair, she soon caught the eye of Hollywood producers. In 1964 she made her first television appearances.
The following year she did more television work, had a small part in the kitsch classic How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965), and acted in her first major film, the 1966 Howard Hawks-produced and directed Western El Dorado, with a memorable role as high-spirited troublemaker Josephine "Joey" MacDonald.
On television she appeared in guest-starring roles on episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1966), Mission Impossible (1969), It Takes a Thief (1970), and three episodes of The Wild Wild West ("The Night of the Feathered Fury", 1967 and the two-part "The Night of the Winged Terror" 1969), the December 1969 episode "Tug-of-War" on The F.B.I., Starsky and Hutch and Alias Smith and Jones. Carey played the title role in the 1972 Gunsmoke episode "Tara", appeared in the second The Six Million Dollar Man pilot film (1973) and provided the recurring female computer voice in A Man Called Sloane (1979–80).
Carey went on to co-star in films such as Live a Little, Love a Little (1968), The Sweet Ride (1968), and Dirty Dingus Magee (1970), in which she played an anachronistically miniskirted Indian girl.
Fading from view in the late 1970s, Carey staged a brief comeback in the mid-'80s in such films as In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro (1986). She also appeared as Crystal in a 1982 episode of the television series The Fall Guy.
Carey married businessman Fred G. Strebel in 1999, and resided with him in Hillsborough and Rancho Mirage. Strebel died on December 28, 2011.
