Lisl Weil was born in Vienna, Austria. She attended school there, and acquired a love of drawing and of music. At age sixteen she was attending art school her drawings were being published regularly in a Viennese newspaper, and she was performing with a dance group. In 1938 she spent a year in Holland, and then in 1939 she moved to New York City and worked as an artist and illustrator. In 1946, she illustrated her first children's book, Doll House by Marion Moss. Throughout her long career, Lisl Weil illustrated more than a hundred children's books, many of them her own stories.
Weil also performed with symphony orchestras by dancing and drawing on a huge easel as the orchestra played music. She also had a weekly television show called "Children's Sketch Book" from 1963-1964.
