She studied at the Academy of Music in Vienna and the San Franciso Conservatory of Music. She also studied painting and film. Her private teachers in composition included Adriana Hölszky, Tristan Murail and Luigi Nono. In 1998 she was featured in two portrait concerts at the Salzburg Festival, the following year, her music theatre work 'Bahlamms Fest', with a libretto by Elfriede Jelinek, premiered at the Wiener Festwochen and won the Ernst Krenek prize. With Elfriede Jelinek she has created two radio plays and three operas. Her opera Lost Highway, based on the film by David Lynch, won a South Bank Show Award in 2008.

Aside from composing, she has also realised sound installations, art exhibitions and short films; one of her multi-media installations was presented at the documenta 12 in Kassel in 2007.Aside from her operas, Olga Neuwirth's most notable works include : the piano concerto 'locus….doublure…solus…' and the trumpet concerto 'miramondo multiplo…'.

In 2008 she was awarded the Heidelberg Prize. In 2010, she received the Grand Austrian State Prize as well as the Louis Spohr Prize of the City of Braunschweig

In 2012 Olga Neuwirth completed two new operas: 'The Outcast' and 'American Lulu', and in 2015, composed a new orchestral work for her Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra 'Masaot/Clock without Hands'. Olga Neuwirth was the 2002 and 2016 Lucerne Festival's Composer in Residence.

In 2018, her new flute concerto Aello - ballet mecanomorphe for the Swedish Chamber Orchestra und Clare Chase (fl) will be premiered. Olga is currently working on a new opera for Vienna State Opera (2019).