Dan Halter was born in Zimbabwe in 1977 to a Swiss father and first-generation Zimbabwean-Swiss mother. His tertiary education includes a year at the Schule fur Gestaltung, Zurich, Switzerland before completing his BA(FA) at the Michaelis School of Art, University of Cape Town, where he received the 4th year painting prize and the Judy Steinberg Award for an outstanding body of work.

Halter has been exhibiting on group exhibitions since 2000, with most recent shows including the Next Wave Festival (2006, Melbourne, Australia) and Contra Mundi at the Association of Visual Arts (2004, Cape Town).