Bisa Butler was born in Orange, New Jersey, the daughter of a college president and a French teacher and the youngest of four siblings. Formally trained, Butler graduated Cum Laude from Howard University with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art degree.  At Howard Butler was able to refine her natural talents under the tutelage of lecturers such as Jeff Donaldson, Al Smith Jr and Skunder Boghossian. She began to experiment with fabric as a medium and became interested in collage techniques. 

Butler then went on to earn a Master’s in Art from Montclair State University in 2005. 

While in the process of obtaining her Master’s degree, Butler took a Fiber Arts class where she had an artistic epiphany and she finally realized how to express her art through cloth. Butler was a high school art teacher for 10 years in the Newark Public Schools and three years at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey.