Rhue was born in Washington, D.C. Rhue graduated from Los Angeles High School and studied drama at Los Angeles City College. From the 1950s to the 1990s, Rhue (née Madeleine Roche) appeared in some twenty films, including Operation Petticoat (1959), A Majority of One (1961), Escape from Zahrain (1962), Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), and Stand Up and Be Counted (1972). She also was a guest star in dozens of television series, including a 1967 appearance as Khan Noonien Singh’s love interest (Lieutenant Marla McGivers) in the Star Trek episode “Space Seed”. In 1960, Rhue had played the spouse of another Ricardo Montalbán character in an episode of NBC’s Bonanza. That year, she also played the title role of Marian Ames in the Perry Mason episode, “The Case of the Wayward Wife”.

Other guest appearances included Cheyenne (1955); Have Gun – Will Travel, Gunsmoke, Riverboat, The Rebel, “Laramie”, and Rawhide (1959); Pony Express, Sugarfoot, Checkmate, The Alaskans, Bourbon Street Beat, and The Roaring 20s (1960); Route 66 (1962); The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1963); The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964, 1967), Daniel Boone (1965); The Fugitive (1964, 1966); Ironside (1967); The Wild Wild West (1967); Mannix (1968); Bracken’s World (1969–70); Hawaii Five-O (1970, 1973); Mission: Impossible (1972); Banacek (1972); Starsky & Hutch (1975);Fantasy Island in (1978); and Charlie’s Angels (1979). She also made appearances on the quiz show, The Match Game (1974-76). In 1962, Rhue married actor Tony Young and acted with him in the western He Rides Tall (1964), but they divorced in 1970. In 1977, Rhue was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She continued to work, including a role on Days of Our Lives; but, by 1985, she needed a wheelchair and was limited to parts that did not require her to walk or stand, such as a recurring roles in Murder She Wrote and Houston Knights, with Michael Beck and Michael Paré. She died from pneumonia at the age of sixty-eight at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills in Los Angeles, California. She was survived by her sister Carol.