Paula Ramona Wright was born in 1924, in San Francisco, California. Her father was a corporate Lawyer. Following her parents' divorce, Raymond and her mother moved to Los Angeles.

Raymond's first acting role was playing Bettina Bowman in Keep Smiling (1938), credited as Paula Rae Wright. In 1950, she was put under contract by MGM, where she played opposite such leading men as Cary Grant and Dick Powell. Earlier in her career, Raymond acted in film noir thrillers such as City That Never Sleeps (with Gig Young, Mala Powers and Marie Windsor), but later in her career she developed a horror film reputation.

As a child, Raymond studied ballet, piano, and singing. She was a member of both the San Francisco Opera Company and the San Francisco Children's Opera Company. She graduated from Hollywood High School in 1942. Following graduation, she returned to San Francisco to attend college. She also worked with two theater groups there.

In 1944, Raymond married Floyd Leroy Patterson. In 1946, they divorced shortly after the birth of their daughter, Raeme Dorene Patterson. In 1993, Raymond's daughter died.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, Raymond appeared in many television shows including Perry Mason (five episodes), Maverick, Hawaiian Eye (five episodes), M Squad (three episodes) with Lee Marvin, 77 Sunset Strip (four episodes), as Martha Harrington in Peter Gunn season 1, episode 11, in 1958. She turned down the role of prostitute/saloon keeper Kitty Russell in the long-running western classic series Gunsmoke, and the role went instead to Amanda Blake. Raymond later noted in an interview that she later regretted the decision but that she had assumed the character would be depicted entirely differently.

In 1952, she played the heroine in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. Her low-budget horror movies included Blood of Dracula's Castle. In 1954, she starred as Queen Berengaria in the film King Richard and the Crusaders. She also starred in a 1955 western, The Gun That Won the West.

She also appeared in the third episode of the first season, initially broadcast on February 3, 1959, in ABC's science fiction series Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond entitled "Emergency Only," which also memorably featured Jocelyn Brando as a screaming fortune Teller at a party.

In 1962, Raymond was a Passenger in a car that crashed into a tree on Sunset Boulevard. Her nose was severed by the rear view mirror. After a little more than a year of extensive plastic surgery and recovery she returned to acting. In 1977, while working on the soap opera Days of Our Lives, after only three appearances, she accidentally tripped on a telephone cord and broke her ankle. She was written out of the show. In 1984, she broke both hips, and in 1994, she broke her shoulder.

Raymond was cast as former Union Army spy Pauline Cushman in the 1964 episode, "The Wooing of Perilous Pauline" of the syndicated western series, Death Valley Days.

On December 31, 2003, Raymond died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from a series of respiratory ailments. She was 79.