Rita Keegan was born in New York and is of Caribbean and Canadian descent. She trained as a painter at San Francisco Art Institute before moving to London in 1980. In 1983, following the Brixton riots, she helped establish the Brixton Art Gallery where she curated the first exhibition by the Black Women Artists collective. In 1984, she co-founded CopyArt, a resource for community groups and artists, funded by the GLC. Keegan was a staff member at the Women Artists Slide Library (1985-1990), where she established the Women of Colour Index – a catalogue of slides recording the work of Black women artists. Working at the intersection of media experimentation, feminist practice and the Black Arts Movement, Keegan's work was widely exhibited during the 1980s and 1990s, including Trophies of Empire at the Bluecoat (1992); Family Histories at 198 (1998). In 2021, Keegan had her first solo at South London Gallery.