Lisberger was born in 1951 in New York City and grew up in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Lisberger attended The Hill School in Pottstown. He went on to become a 1974 graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.

While attending the museum school, he and five associates formed Lisberger Studios. Their first project of note was Cosmic Cartoon which earned a Student Academy Award nomination in 1973. It was also featured in the nationally released anthology film Fantastic Animation Festival in 1977. Through his company Lisberger Studios, Lisberger directed the production, from 1974–77, of commercials, title sequences and feature segments for such shows as the ABC-TV children's series Make a Wish.

In 1978, after moving to Venice, California, Lisberger and his Business partner Donald Kushner conceived and produced a 90-minute animated film, Animalympics, for NBC-TV's aborted coverage of the 1980 Olympics. They then turned their creative efforts to the development of Tron at Disney. It was released in 1982.

His film Hot Pursuit (1987) is one of Ben Stiller's first speaking roles.

He was hired as Director for Slipstream in 1989, but the film did not do well.

Lisberger spent most of the 1990s and 2000s writing screenplays with several being optioned by various studios.

In 2007 it was announced that he and Jessica Chobot were working together on a film project called Soul Code, but it got lost in development hell.