Luana Patten was born in Long Beach, California to Harvey T. Patten and Alma (née Miller) Patten, natives of Enid, Oklahoma. At the age of 3 she was a young model and later was hired by Walt Disney. Patten made her first film appearance in Joel Chandler Harris's 1946 musical Song of the South with Bobby Driscoll. They also appeared together in Song of the South's sister film So Dear to My Heart.
She appeared again with Bobby Driscoll in the Pecos Bill segment of Disney's Melody Time. In 1947, she appeared with Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy, and Mortimer Snerd during the live action scenes in Fun and Fancy Free. She played the role of Priscilla Lapham in Disney's 1957 production of Johnny Tremain. In 1958, Patten played the part of Elizabeth Buckley in the episode "Twelve Guns" of NBC's Cimarron City western television series. It was on Cimarron City that she met her Future second husband, John Smith, whom she married two years later. The couple divorced in 1964.
In 1959, she played "Abbie Fenton" in the episode "Call Your Shot" of Wanted: Dead of Alive, starring Steve McQueen and the same year played "Ruth" in "The Ruth Marshall Story" season 3, episode 13 of Wagon Train that aired Dec 30, 1959. In 1960, she played "Libby Halstead" in Vincente Minnelli's Home from the Hill. In 1966, she played a saloon girl named "Lorna Medford" in the episode "Credit for a Kill" of Bonanza. In 1966, she had a small part as Nora White, the new bride of the reformed "Whitey" played by Kurt Russell, in Follow Me, Boys!. She also appeared in Fun and Fancy Free, A Thunder of Drums, and the Rawhide episode "Incident of the Druid Curse" on CBS. That year she also appeared on Perry Mason as defendant Cynthia Perkins in "The Case of the Scarlet Scandal". She retired from the film industry in 1968 except for a brief cameo in the 1988 film Grotesque.
