Illegitimate son of George Heriot, Jr., MP, goldsmith of Edinburgh, he had letters of legitimation published on 24 May 1593 and followed in his father's footsteps as a goldsmith, as did his half-brother, also named George (the "Jinglin' Geordie" of Sir Walter Scott's tales and the goldsmith / jeweller to James I of England and Scotland). David became a burgess of the city of Edinburgh on 28 April 1601 by right of his wife Margaret, whose late father had been a Burgess and Guildsbrother.

He does not appear to have been the son of his father's first wife, Elizabeth Balderstone, whose eldest child was born in 1563 and followed by two more before her death, as David was legitimated in 1593, so if he were born before Elizabeth's marriage to his father, they had waited more than 30 years for his legitimation. David was unlikely to have been the son of his father's second wife, Katherine Oustean [pronounced Austen], who likely was the mother of the children born in the 1580s, nor of his father's third known wife, Christian Blawe, whose children were born in the 1590s and early 1600: Christian's youngest child, Sibilla, was not yet 21 in December 1623, by which time David, by then deceased for over a decade, had already married and fathered fourteen children. Given the size of David's family and the few events known of his life, it is likely he was born before his father's first marriage.

David was alive on 30 November 1611 when he and his half-brother George Jr were granted permission to erect a tomb to their late father at Greyfriars' Kirkyard, but George Jr's accounts for 1611, tallied to the end of December 1611, included a bill for William Cokie to apply gilt to the tomb, and refers to David as "unquhill": deceased, or late, so David had died sometime between 30 November and 31 December 1611.