David Rowe was born in the Netherlands in 1968, and arrived in Canberra at the age of four. He started drawing when attending St Edmund's College, and after dropping out of every tertiary institution available, found work on the Canberra Times. After a brief stint in London, he moved to Sydney to work at Fairfax. For over twenty years his cartoons and caricatures have appeared in the Australian Financial Review and other Fairfax publications.

Rowe is the recipient of numerous cartooning awards, including multiple Walkleys, Gold Stanley Awards, and Behind the Lines Cartoonist of the Year, as well as many prestigious international awards. He is consistently the most popular cartoonist in the bible of Australian political cartooning, Russ Radcliffe's Best Australian Political Cartoons.