Herta started out as a young singer and songwriter when she met actor Will Geer. At the time he was the companion of Gay activist Harry Hey. Will left Harry and married Herta in 1934. Years later Harry would say to Herta, "I had Will first!" to which she replied, "But I had him longest!" After her marriage she appeared in such Broadway productions as The Cradle Will Rock, Let Freedom Ring, The Glass Menagerie, and Skin of Our Teeth.

Studs Terkel, the author who later wrote the classic Working, introduced Will and Herta to Woody Guthrie, and the couple soon joined with him and Burl Ives on a tour of migrant camps, entertaining dust bowl refugees. As Will Geer put it in his introduction to The Woody Guthrie Songbook, "It was the summer that Hitler marched to Poland... We played in the migratory camps, sang ballads and did sketches. Most of our audiences came from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl and roared and slapped their thighs when Woody sang about familiar things in his songs." They remained good friends throughout their lives. Woody visited them in New York after Herta had her first baby, Kate. She was singing in clubs at the time. "I was young and had confidence. I loved folk music," she remembered in a 1999 interview. Woody had hocked his guitar. In a surge of generosity, Herta gave him her much loved Martin and was dismayed to see him walk off into the rain with it without a case. "That was the end of my Martin guitar. I never saw it again."

In the Forties, Will settled into a lucrative career as a radio star and film character actor while Herta became a full-time mom of daughters Kate and new baby Ellen. By 1950, when they had their third child, Thad, they were living in comfort. "We had a nice house in Santa Monica," Herta recalled. Will was busy making pictures, including socially aware films like Broken Arrow and Intruder in the Dust. That all ended when The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), originally formed by Congress to investigate internal fascism, decided to investigate possible communist ties to the entertainment industry. They subpoenaed Will, who traveled cross-country to Washington with Herta and the kids to be heard. He refused to name names and took the Fifth, but not before he laid into the committee: "I believe that [the Communist party is] being persecuted," he told the Representatives, "Like the Mormons, the Jews, the Quakers, the Masons... even radical Republicans in Lincoln’s day." Later, Will summed up the experience this way: "We all have to appear in a turkey once in a while." Geer was blacklisted, and his blacklisting was supported by the Screen Actors' Guild.

Geer was blacklisted and the Santa Monica house was lost. They found sanctuary on five acres of land that Ware purchased in Topanga Canyon for $10,000. Will and Herta invited other blacklisted friends up to the Canyon, including Pete Seeger and Oscar winners Anne Revere and Gale Sondergaard, and put on Sunday shows to keep their spirits alive. Woody often sang, though as time went on, Herta said, "His disease (Huntington's Chorea) was beginning to show. He couldn't hold his guitar." The Geers offered the itinerant Woody a place to live on the property that is still called "Woody's Shack."

On those Sundays, Will would usher an audience in from the road to sit on bales of hay and watch their original folk plays, dances and concerts. After, he would pass the hat. In Herta's book Fantastic Journey—My Life with Will Geer, she described in her sweet and soulful voice what it was like for the blacklisted actor: "Many a blacklisted writer has functioned fully with his blacklisted label covered by a pseudonym... But actors, wholly dependent on their faces, voices and their whole presence, have nowhere to hide. Bravo to those who pushed on through, whose health and libido remained intact and blossomed sweeter than ever through all the manure. Infinite sadness for those who could not. They were cut off in their prime. It is one of many American Tragedies."

Will and Herta's marriage couldn't stand the strain of those days. In 1954, they divorced. Ware then married actor David Marshall, with whom she had a daughter, actress Melora Marshall. Meanwhile, they rented out their Topanga home, not returning to it for years. Geer's stage career was saved when John Houseman hired him for Broadway. Then Otto Preminger ironically cast Geer to play a senator in Advise and Consent in 1962. In 1973, when Herta was single once again and Will was successfully cast as Grampa on TV's The Waltons, Will and Herta reunited and, with their children, moved back to Topanga and formed the Theatricum Botanicum.

Will Geer died in 1978. After his death, Herta finally make her film debut in 1980 with The Black Marble. Other films she appeared in include 2010 in 1984; Slam Dance and Promised Land, both in 1987; Species and Top Dog in 1995; and Cruel Intentions and the Minnie Driver Comedy Beautiful in 1999. Herta was best known for her portrayal of Jack Gilford's wife 'Rosie Lefkowitz' in the 1985 film Cocoon. She also made several Television appearances on shows like Knots Landing, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Cagney and Lacey and Star Trek: The Next Generation. She also made a memorable appearance on The Golden Girls in 1988, where she played an elderly woman turned out in the street when she could no longer pay the bills at her rest home.

DBNS was Herta's final film appearance. The matriarch of the Theatricum Botanicum family, Herta died peacefully on August 15, of complications of Parkinson's Disease at the age of 88. Her ashes, and those of Geer, were scattered at their outdoor theatre.