Her work has been exhibited widely at galleries and museums in both the US and abroad, and in 2011 the survey exhibition, Cynthia Greig: Subverting the (un)Conventional curated by Dick Goody was exhibited at the Oakland University Art Gallery.

Public collections with her work include the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Light Work, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Smith College Museum of Art among others.

In addition to her own imagemaking, Greig is an avid collector of nineteenth-century photography and, with Catherine Smith, co-authored the book of vintage photographs, Women in Pants: Manly Maidens, Cowgirls and Other Renegades. The concept for the book was inspired by the fictional 19th-century cross-dressing photographer, Isabelle Raymond, a persona performed by Greig both in front of and behind the camera for her installation New Eden. The book chronicles through photographs the less celebrated history of the countless women—actresses, soldiers, lesbians, athletes, adventurers, laborers to name a few—who defied convention and dared to wear trousers long before pants became an accepted clothing option for women. The book was published by Harry N. Abrams in 2003.

Greig received her MFA from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She also studied filmmaking at the University of Iowa where she received her MA in art history and earned her BFA in printmaking at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.