Hooper Dunbar was born in Los Angeles, California, United States. He worked as an actor on stage and screen, making films with Columbia, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Twentieth Century-Fox studios, and was a member of the Screen Actors’ Guild of America. In 1958, he left Hollywood to take up residence in Central and South America, where he taught arts and English as a second language, and set up a graphic design business. However, his primary interest during those years was volunteer work as a teacher and lecturer for the Bahá’í Faith.

Dunbar was a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Nicaragua from its inception in 1961 to 1963, when he represented that Assembly at the first International Convention in Haifa, Israel. Subsequently, he was appointed as an Auxiliary Board member for the Protection of the Faith in the Americas and served from 1963 to 1968, and then as a Counsellor for the Protection and Propagation of the Faith from 1968 to 1973, also for the Americas. He took up residence in Israel in 1973 when he was named as one of the founding members of the International Teaching Centre. Dunbar worked as a member of that institution for fifteen years, until he was elected to the Universal House of Justice in 1988. On January 6th, 2010 it was announced that he would retire following a by-election to replace him. He retired along with Dr. Peter Khan.

Throughout his tenure at the World Centre, Dunbar held a Thursday evening study class for the youth volunteering there. The class ran consistently for over 30 years.