Musier-Forsyth was born in 1962 in Dover, NJ to Horst and Maria Musier, who immigrated to the United States from Germany in the 1950s.
In 1984, Musier-Forsyth enrolled in graduate school at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY in the Department of Chemistry.
Musier-Forsyth met her husband, Craig Forsyth,[3] in graduate school and they were married in Ithaca, NY in 1988.
Musier-Forsyth has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, and is known for her work on elucidating key protein:nucleic interactions involved in viral replication and in the translation of the genetic code.
Her work has also provided fundamental insights into how retroviral replication involves host amino acyl tRNA synthetases and tRNAs.