Deborah Ann "Debbi" Morgan was born on September 20, 1956, in Dunn, North Carolina, and moved to the Bronx, New York City when she was three months old. She is the daughter of Lora, a teacher, and George Morgan Jr., a butcher, who died of leukemia when she was eight years old.

She has a younger sister named Terry and graduated from Aquinas High School in the Bronx. She began acting in high school productions and further developed her skills by working with the Negro Ensemble Company and the New Federal Theatre.

Her early career included stage performances such as the Broadway play "What the Wine Sellers Buy" in 1974 and tour productions. Her television debut included guest roles and recurring parts on shows like "Good Times" and "What's Happening!!," and she gained early acclaim for portraying Elizabeth Harvey in the 1979 miniseries "Roots: The Next Generations."

Her breakout role came with the character of Angie Baxter–Hubbard on the ABC daytime soap opera "All My Children," a role she portrayed from 1982 to 2011 across multiple soap operas including "Loving" and "The City."

Her portrayal earned her the 1989 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, making her the first African American to win in that category, alongside multiple Emmy nominations throughout her career. She also starred in other daytime dramas such as "Generations" and "Port Charles."

She is recognized for helping shape the representation of Black women as successful and complex characters on daytime television.

In cinema, she received widespread critical acclaim for her performance as the clairvoyant Mozelle Batiste-Delacroix in the 1997 film "Eve's Bayou," for which she won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female and the Chicago Film Critics Association Award.

She was also nominated for several other awards for this role. Her film career includes notable appearances in "The Hurricane" (1999), "Love & Basketball" (2000), "Coach Carter" (2005), and "Woman Thou Art Loosed" (2004). On television, she is known for her role as the Seer on the supernatural drama "Charmed" in seasons four and five and had recurring roles in the Starz series "Power" and its spinoff "Power Book II: Ghost." Recently, she has co-starred in series such as Fox's "Our Kind of People."