[1] Iris ter Schiphorst was born in Hamburg into a middle-class family, her father a Dutch technician and her mother a German pianist.

She also attended seminars with composers Dieter Schnebel and Luigi Nono and musicologist Helga de la Motte-Haber, but is otherwise self-taught in composition.

Later in the decade she co-founded the zeit-Musik collective of composers and musicologists, and concentrated on music exploring the relationship between text and sound.

Works from this period include the radio pieces Inside-outside II (1989) and Und was, wenn die Schlange ein Schwein gewesen wäre?

1055, die Welt ist noch in Ordnung (1984) is an early example, but it was only in the nineties that this became a large part of her output, beginning with Strings (1991), Anna's Wake, and Z.B.

[6] One work ter Schiphorst did produce independently in the late 1990s, and a significant milestone, was her first composition for full orchestra, Hundert Komma Null (1999).

Odysseus (2012–2013; with Uros Rojko) reflect ter Schiphorst's interest in bringing the language of contemporary music to young performers and listeners.

Her music has been championed by renowned artists such as Martyn Brabbins, the Arditti Quartet, Salome Kammer, Peter Rundel, Roland Kluttig and Evan Christ.

[10][11] Her other awards and distinctions include: first prize in the Third Composition Competition for Synthesized and Computerized Music in 1992; her tenure in 2004 as artist-in-residence at Künstlerinnenhof Die Höge, a centre for female artists at Bassum near Bremen; the selection of Zerstören (2005/2006) as an official German entry for the 2007 World Music Days in Hong Kong; the special jury prize at the Internationaler Komponistinnen Wettbewerb in 2008 for Zehn Miniaturen für Cello und Akkordeon (2008); and her selection as one of four prizewinners in the 2011 ad libitum Composition Competition for Klangrätsel (2010).