Donovan received his BBA in Finance from the Schulich School of Business at York University (1993 - 1997) and his MBA from Columbia Business School (2000 – 2002). He worked successfully as a trader for Merrill Lynch. Donovan is an avid Sailor and father of a son, Maverick, along with his wife, Jenn. He has cerebral palsy.

In 2006, Rich Donovan founded Lime Connect. Lime Connect is an organization whose goal is to find employment for people with disabilities. The idea with Lime Connect is: “to connect with the brightest people with disabilities from all disciplines. Results have been stellar, with the Lime Connect Fellowship Program placing 20 young stars in 2011 alone, six of whom were hired by Google.” Other companies Lime has partnered with include PepsiCo, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, IBM, and TD Bank.

Rich Donovan is a founder of several research and advisory companies that have foregrounded the Business case for companies and governments to act on the disability market. In 2008, he founded what is now called The Return on Disability Group to build metric and Models that allow for analysis of corporate activity which help assess how well businesses engage customers and employees with disabilities. The organization’s "Return on Disability Reports" and other Models helps companies understand their performance across disability factors that are linked directly to profitability. As well they produce the Return on Disability Indices for the U.S. and Canada markets. These financial tools "recognize public companies that are outperforming in the disability market." The RoD US 100 and the RoD Canada 50, are published daily by Bloomberg LP. The indices track the shares of the 100 firms that deal best with disabled people. The Economist notes that in the five years to 2012 the US index had outperformed the broader stock market.