Lynn Fontanne was born as the daughter of the printer Jules Fontanne, a native French and the Irish Frances Ellen Thornley. From childhood called to Lynn, they are enthusiastic in his early years in acting. Through a family friend, she was familiar with the actress Ellen Terry, from which she received acting lessons. Her theater debut in London, she celebrated in 1905 with a small role as a mime in the Theater Royal in Drury Lane, the other supporting roles in theaters or followed on tour in England. In 1910 she first visited, United Kingdom, where they are in the play, Mr. Preedy and the Countess her Broadway debut-was. Although she lived more than six decades later in the U.S., she applied, neither the U.S. nor was their British citizenship to. Lynn Fontanne was primarily known as a theater actress who could be required for about 35 plays. She was nominated as 1959 for the Tony Award, and was eleven years later to claim even a 1970 Tony for themselves.

In 1919 Fontanne learned about the five years younger actor Alfred Lunt. Her first big success was the title role in George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly Dulcy (1921). In May 1922 married Lunt and Fontanne. The couple was from 1924 to 1929 Member of the American Theater Company, Theater Guild and appeared there in such plays as Ferenc Molnár's divorce from Margit veszi (The Guardsmen, 1924-25), George Bernard Shaw's Heroes (1925-26) and Pygmalion (1926/27) or Franz Werfel's Goat Song (The Goat Song, 1926). Even today they are considered one of the first actors couples of history, which usually appeared together on stage in appearance. She also shared the joint film projects.

Fontanne, 1924 in the Second Youth was also the first time before the camera, as her husband only a small number of film appearances call their own. Her term was the most successful movie theater adaptation of Werfel's Goat Song, The Guardsman (1931), was nominated for the Fontanne in 1932 for the Oscar as Best Actress.

Fontanne and Lunt also founded in the year 1958, the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in New York City, where on 5 May 1958 with Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Visit of the old lady's first play was brought to the performance.

Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt had been married to Lunt's death in 1977. After it Fontanne back to her country estate in Waukesha County. Here, she died six years later, at the age of 95 years, a severe pneumonia.
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