Briar Grace-Smith affiliates to the Ngati Hau hapu of Ngapuhi and to Ngati Wai. She has worked as an actor and writer with Maori theatre companies Te Ohu Whakaari and He Ara Hou.

In 1994 Briar trained as a script advisor with Playmarket and in 1995 made her debut as a playwright with Nga Pou Wahine, which received the Peter Harcourt award for best short play at the 1995 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. In 1995 she was also recipient of the Sunday Star Times Bruce Mason Playwriting Award.

Her more recent plays are Purapurawhetu (which won best New Zealand play award at the 1997 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards), Potiki's Memory of Stone, When Sun and Moon Collide and 100 Cousins.
Briar has also had her short stories published in various anthologies including The Six Pack, published by New Zealand book month 2006.

National Radio has produced her stories for children (EARS) and she has also adapted the stageplays When Sun and Moon Collide (2006) and Potiki's Memory of Stone (2007) for RNZ.

Briar won an Arts Laureate Award in 2000, an initiative of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand, and was writer in residence at Victoria University for 2003. Her television credits include Being Eve and Fish Skin Suit.
Her feature film screenplay The Strength of Water was selected to be part of the Sundance Screenwriters Laboratory in Utah in 2006 and was filmed in Hokianga in 2007. Released in New Zealand in 2008.