Dankmar Adler was born on July 3, 1844, in Stadt Lengsfeld, Germany, to Rabbi Liebman and Sara Adler. Sara died a few days after Dankmar's birth, it is claimed by the family that his grieving father named him Dankmar to combine his thankfulness ("dank" in German) for his new son with the bitterness ("mar" in Hebrew) in losing his beloved wife. Liebman Adler remarried in 1846, and in 1854 the Adler family immigrated to America. Adler grew up in Detroit and apprenticed himself to an architect there until the family moved again, to Chicago, in 1861. In 1862 Adler enlisted in the First Regiment of the Illinois Light Artillery, fighting until he was discharged at the end of the war in 1865. Afterwards, he worked for various architecture firms, and during this time he designed the Central Music Hall in Chicago, his first major building. Around 1881, he founded his own firm with Louis Sullivan. During their fruitful years together Adler and Sullivan designed and built over 100 buildings, including Chicago's Auditorium Theater, Garrick Theater Building, and Stock Exchange Building. Adler built a reputation as a keen acoustician from his work on theater buildings, and he was an acoustical consultant in the construction of New York's famed Carnegie Hall.

Adler married Dila Kohn, daughter of a prominent Jewish merchant in Chicago, in 1872, and the couple had three children. He split amicably with Sullivan in 1896, and took smaller building projects in Chicago, including the Isaiah Temple (now the Ebenezer M.B. Church). Adler died unexpectedly of a stroke in 1900; he was only 56 years old. A pillar from his Central Music Hall marks his gravesite, at Mt. Mayriv Cemetery in Chicago.