Dorothy was invited to join the Committee of Management at Women’s Pioneer Housing’s second meeting on 30th September 1920. She was an important figure during the financial crisis of 1921,  holding meetings at her own house, and supporting WPH through its dire financial problems. In an effort to find tenants willing to invest in the first house, she organised two public meetings. Dorothy also chaired the two special meetings of shareholders in May 1921, when Ray Strachey came forward with a solution to save WPH from liquidation.

Dorothy was connected with some of WPH’s investors, and she helped to organise the opening ceremony for 28 Phillimore Gardens with Etheldred and Violet Durand. After 1925, she became much less involved with WPH, but was replaced by her husband Charles, who helped secure its finances. 

Outside of WPH work, Dorothy was a successful writer and businesswoman. She won a writing competition in Woman magazine aged 17, and was encouraged by its editor, the esteemed novelist Arnold Bennett, to begin writing about domestic matters and cookery.

Once Dorothy’s children were all at school in 1913, her career took off. She became editor of the household department of The Queen, a position she held for seventeen years, as well as working for Hearth and Home and The Lady. 

During the First World War she worked as co-director of women’s service for the Ministry of Food during the period of voluntary food rations from March 1917 to March 1918. In 1918, Lord Northcott made her editor of the women's page of the Daily Mail, and The Mail's Food Bureau launched on 4 March 1918, just as rationing became compulsory. She provided her readers with thrifty recipes. In 1919 Dorothy was awarded the Order of the British Empire for her services during the war.

In August 1934, Charles wrote to tell the COM of Dorothy’s death. He resigned and did not attend any more meetings, but wrote after the AGMs in 1937 and 1939 to congratulate the Society on a successful year.  The COM recorded ‘the appreciation of the committee for the fine work done for Women’s Pioneer Housing by Mr and Mrs Peel from the earliest days right up to the present, a period of 12 years’.