Moss graduated at Smith College in Massachusetts in 1962, majoring in philosophy. She worked as a reporter for Newsweek, specialising in theatre and the dramatic arts.

However, while visiting Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania 1967, she met leading elephant researcher Dr. Iain Douglas-Hamilton in Tanzania. The following year she quit her job at Newsweek to work with Douglas-Hamilton and in 1972, she started the now famous Amboseli Elephant Research Project at Amboseli National Park in Kenya.