A native of Manhattan, where she was born Jean Herzberg, Lipman grew up in Midtown before receiving her BA from Wellesley College[1] and her MA in art history from New York University, taking as the topic of her master's thesis a collection of profile portraits from Florence.
[1] Jean and Howard Lipman sold their collection of folk art to Stephen Clark of the New York State Historical Association in 1950; nevertheless, she remained committed to the subject, continuing to research and write.
The couple also collected modern American sculptor, eventually acquiring works by Alexander Calder, Donald Judd, Louise Nevelson, and David Smith, among others; these they donated to the Whitney Museum of American Art.
[2] As a historian, Lipman came to specialize in the fields of American painted furniture and folk carving.
[1] The Lipmans' papers are currently housed in the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution,[3] which also owns an interview conducted with her in 1973.