Born in Westport, Connecticut, she received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1971. In 1969 she lived on a kibbutz in Israel and participated in an archeological dig at the site of King Solomon’s temple.

From 1970 to 1983 Leibovitz worked as a freelance photographer and then the chief photographer for Rolling Stone magazine. She served as a concert-tour photographer for the Rolling Stones band in 1975. She has been a contributing photographer for Vanity Fair magazine since 1983, and in the early 1990s she founded the Annie Leibovitz Studio in New York City.
Leibovitz has mounted a number of exhibitions that have toured the United States and Europe. The National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. honored her with a retrospective that traveled the U.S., Europe and Asia. She has received the Photographer of the Year Award and the Innovation in Photography Award from the American Society of Magazine Photographers, the Clio Award, the Campaign of the Decade Award from Advertising Age magazine, and the Infinity Award for applied photography from the International Center for Photography.

Her work includes magazine, fashion and advertising photography, and many of her portraits of rock music celebrities have become signature images. Her photo of a nude John Lennon on a bed with his wife Yoko Ono was the last portrait of the great pop star before his death.