After finishing her degree, Denham immediately moved to New York City, where she aspired to be a writer and began
modeling to earn money. She also posed for a variety of magazine and book covers as well as comic strips and film posters. She wrote stories for pulp magazines, occasionally also posing for the covers and illustrations; an issue of the men's magazine
True Adventures featured her on the cover while including her short story "Girl Gun Runners of Saigon". Denham was
Playboy magazine's
Playmate of the Month for the July 1956 issue, which also included a reprinting of her story "The Deal", accompanied by an illustration by
LeRoy Neiman. However, the magazine rejected two of her subsequent stories after it decided to no longer feature women's bylines. Most of her relationships were with married men. She also penned the novelisations
Adios, Sabata (1971) and
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1968). An early second wave feminist, Denham campaigned to legalize abortion and was a member of the
National Organization for Women's original chapter. In the 1970s, she served as an associate professor at
John Jay College of the
City University of New York. During this time, she participated in a discrimination case of the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that was settled in the faculty women's favor for $3.5 million. Denham was the subject of a musical composition by
Fluxus artist
Al Hansen; "Alice Denham In 48 Seconds". In 2006, she published
Sleeping with Bad Boys, an intimate memoir about her experiences in the New York circle of writers in the 1950s and 1960s. It was followed in 2013 by her book
Secrets of San Miguel, which contained stories about the bohemian community in
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and was inspired by her numerous visits to the city. ==Personal life==