Luc Ferrari was born in Paris in 1929 and studied piano and composition with Alfred Cortot, Arthur Honegger and Olivier Messiaen. He began composing in 1946. In 1952 he attended the Darmstadt Summer School. He was a member of the Groupe de Musique Concrète from 1958 to 1966. With Pierre Schaeffer, he founded the Groupe de Recherche Musicale (1958-59). He has taught composition in, Köln and Pantin (near Paris); and experimental music in Stockholm. In 1968/69, he served as artistic director of the Maison de la Culture d' Amiens.

In 1965/66, with Gérard Patris, he produced a TV series Les Grandes Répétitions on the work of Olivier Messiaen, Edgar Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Hermann Scherchen, and Cecil Taylor.

In 1972 he built his studio, a modest electroacoustic workshop, known as "Billig". In 1982 he created the association "La Muse en Circuit ", a studio for electroacoustic composition and radio art. In 1996, he rebuilt his studio, this time called "Atelier post-billig".

In 1995 a Ferrari season "Parcours Confus" was organized throughout Holland. In 2000, a retrospective of all his electroacoustic compositions and radio art pieces was organized by the Futura festival, Crest, France. He travelled to the United States in 2001 and Tokyo in 2002 and 2003, then to Marseille and Switzerland for concert performances. In 2004 the ensemble Ars Nova, with the city of Poitiers, organized a week-long Ferrari-retrospective of his electroacoustic solo and orchestra works within the Lille 2004 festival. In November 2004, a week of Ferrari's compositions for ensembles, electroacoustic works, and his audio-visual installation Cycle des souvenirs was organized by the Novelum festival of Toulouse.