Ulybyshev was born in Dresden, the son of the Russian ambassador to the Electorate of Saxony (which was a sub-unit of the Holy Roman Empire).
From 1816 to 1830, he served in the Russian Foreign Ministry, where his duties from 1825 to 1830 included editing the Journal de St.-Pétersbourg.
Ulybyshev's three-volume Nouvelle biographie de Mozart (Dresden, 1843) was influential on nineteenth-century perceptions of the composer.
It was later translated into German, and into Russian by Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
He also wrote a number of articles on music for the Journal de St.-Pétersbourg.