[1] He is most widely known for his work on feature films for Walt Disney Animation Studios, for which Ashman wrote the lyrics and Alan Menken composed the music.

[11] After graduating from Indiana University in 1974, Ashman moved to New York and worked as an editor at Grosset & Dunlap.

Ashman's play The Confirmation was produced in 1977 at Princeton's McCarter Theater and starred Herschel Bernardi.

Ashman met future collaborator Alan Menken at the BMI Workshop, where he was classmates with Maury Yeston and Ed Kleban, among others.

Also in 1986, Ashman wrote the screenplay for the Frank Oz–directed film adaptation of his musical Little Shop of Horrors, as well as contributing the lyrics for two new songs, "Some Fun Now" and "Mean Green Mother from Outer Space", the latter of which received an Academy Award nomination.

In 1986, Ashman was brought in to write lyrics for a song in Walt Disney Animation Studios' Oliver & Company.

After he wrote a group of songs with partner Alan Menken and a film treatment, a screenplay was written by Linda Woolverton, who had worked on Beauty and the Beast.

[17] Directors John Musker and Ron Clements then joined the production, and the story underwent many changes, with some elements of the original treatment being dropped.

In May 2020, Beauty and the Beast co-director Kirk Wise said, "If you had to point to one person responsible for the 'Disney Renaissance', I would say it was Howard.

Peter Kunze noted that Ashman was supported by Jeffrey Katzenberg; Disney created a production unit near his home in Beacon, New York, allowing him to continue working on Beauty and the Beast, while undergoing treatment at the Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Centers in New York City.

On the 2002 Special Edition DVD of Beauty and the Beast, the Disney animators teamed up again and added a new song called "Human Again", which Ashman and Menken had written for the film but had been cut from the finished product.

Jeffrey Katzenberg claims there are two angels watching down on them that put their magic touch on every film they made.

In March 2017, Don Hahn confirmed he was working on a documentary biographical film about Howard Ashman.