George Lindemann was born to a Jewish family in 1936 in New York City. He received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

From 1962 to 1972, he served as the President of Smith, Miller and Patch, a pharmaceutical company. He sold Permalens, his family company, to Cooper Labs for $75 million in 1971, and founded Vision Cable in 1972. In 1982, he sold it to Samuel Irving Newhouse, Jr. and his brother for $220 million. Shortly after, he founded a cell phone company called Metro Mobile and later sold it to Bell Atlantic for $2.5 billion in 1991. He was then the CEO of Southern Union, a pipeline company, which was sold in 2012 to Energy Transfer Equity, LP for approximately $2.0 billion. He also owns 19 Spanish-speaking radio stations. He has been the President of Cellular Dynamics and the Managing General Partner of Activated Communications Limited Partnership since 1982. He has been a General Partner of Panhandle Eastern since 1990. He sits on the board of Directors of HI Europe Limited and on the advisory board of Hudson Clean Energy Partners.

Lindemann serves as the President of the board of Directors of the Bass Museum of Art. George Lindemann Sr. lives in Palm Beach, Florida, with further homes on the Upper East Side and in Greenwich, Connecticut. As of September 2011, he is the 736th richest person in the world, and the 220th richest in the United States, with an estimated wealth of US$2.1 billion. He owns a 180-foot schooner, Adela, which has won international sailing competitions. The Lindemanns are members of the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County.

On the Forbes 2016 list of the world's billionaires, he was ranked #722 with a net worth of US$2.4 billion.