Ian Harvie was born May 28, 1968, in Portland, Maine. Harvie knew he was transgender at a very early age, but didn't have a language for his gender identity at the time. Harvie came out as gay at nineteen and as transgender at age thirty-two. Harvie grew up on Beaver Pond in the rural mountain town of Bridgton, Maine, until the age of twelve. He has two older brothers, Rob and Jeff. Early comedy influences he has cited include The Carol Burnett Show, Flip Wilson, Rich Little, Hee Haw, Laugh-In, Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, and Saturday Night Live.

Harvie began his stand-up comedy career in January 2002 at a small comedy club in Portland, Maine. Three months later he began performing at a sister club in Boston, Massachusetts. Harvie moved to Los Angeles, California, in June 2006. By November 2006 he began touring with Comedian Margaret Cho as her opening act. Cho cast Harvie as a permanent member of her off-Broadway burlesque comedy revue, Margaret Cho's The Sensuous Woman.

From October 2006 through October 2009, Harvie toured comedy clubs and theaters around the world with Margaret Cho. In 2007, he appeared on Logo as part of the Wisecrack Outlaugh Festival on Wisecrack. He performed on Logo again in 2009 on One Night Stand Up Episode 6 and on ABC's late night television series, Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen, in the 2009 season.

In April 2007, Harvie began producing and hosting his own self-titled comedy/talk show, The Ian Harvie Show, at Los Angeles music and comedy club Largo. The show is similar in format to other late-night talk shows but with guests who are all LGBT or connected to the LGBT community. Previous guests of the show include Margaret Cho, Leslie Jordan, Jane Lynch, Alan Cumming, Jorja Fox, Suzanne Westenhoefer, Kimberly Peirce, Rex Lee, Selene Luna, Jenny Shimizu, Buck Angel, Garrison Starr, Sabrina Matthews, and Erin Foley.

In November 2009, Harvie began his solo headlining career. His one-man show Parts Sold Separately, which features humor about sex and gender, played the Melbourne International Comedy Arts Festival in Melbourne, Australia, in April 2010. In January 2011, Harvie performed his new solo show Balls OUT with Ian Harvie at SF SketchFest in San Francisco, California.

In September 2010, Harvie and fellow sober comedians Felon O'Reilly and Amy Dresner began a three-person comedy group. They traveled around the US with their collective recovery-based standup comedy show, Laughs Without Liquor: the We Are Not Saints tour. The road show and tour were filmed by filmmaker and Director Bobby R. Poirier with a planned release date of summer 2011.