Louise Fishman was born in 1939 in Philadelphia. In 1956 she began studying art at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, then at Stella Elkins Tyler School of Art, where she earned her BFA in Painting and Printmaking, and a B.S. in Art Education in 1963. She completed her MFA in Painting and Printmaking at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana, and headed directly to New York in 1965, where she lived and worked until her death in 2021. In 2012 Fishman married Ingrid Nyeboe.

Her work is represented in many public collections, including: the National Academy of Art and Design, NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, PA; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; the Jewish Museum, New York; the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; the Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL; the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; the Hood Museum, Hanover, NH; the Kunstmuseum Lichtenstein, Vaduz, Lichtenstein; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; the Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.

She was the recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts grants; a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship; and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among others. She was included in three Whitney Biennials, 1973, 1987, and 2014. In 2016, the Neuberger Museum of Art organized the artist’s first retrospective, curated by Helaine Posner, which traveled to the Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro. A second related exhibition at the ICA Philadelphia titled Paper Louise Tiny Fishman Rock, was curated by Ingrid Schaffner. A retrospective of work on paper curated by Amy L. Powell, A Question of Emphasis: Louise Fishman Drawing was at the Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL in 2021/2022.