The town is known nowadays mainly for its regionally used shopping centre, the Isenburg-Zentrum (IZ), the Hugenottenhalle, the Hotel Kempinski Frankfurt, the Autokino Gravenbruch (the oldest drive-in cinema in Europe), the Sportpark, the Waldschwimmbad (swimming pool) and its location near Frankfurt Airport.

In 1959, building work began on the Wohnstadt im Grünen ("Living Town in the Green"), as it was marketed.

Owing to the great number of young families that moved there, this constituent community was known as the town with Europe's densest population of children.

With the amalgamation of the formerly self-administering community of Zeppelinheim in the course of municipal reform in 1977, Neu-Isenburg also stretched farther westwards.

Neu-Isenburg was founded on 24 July 1699 as a town of exiles by Huguenots, French Protestants who had had to flee their homeland after the Edict of Nantes was revoked.

Their new landlord, Count Johann Philipp von Isenburg-Offenbach, guaranteed them safety, the free use of the French language and religious freedom.

He gave them leave to settle in the Wildbann Dreieich, an old royal hunting forest, in the place where in the Middle Ages the pilgrimage chapel Zum Heiligen Kreuz ("To the Holy Cross") once stood.

The settlers at first worked at farming, but later turned back to the handicraft trades that they had learnt, such as the stocking knitter's craft, thereby laying the groundwork for Neu-Isenburg's economic development.

The surrounding communities eyed the French settlers with great mistrust and called the town welsches Dorf (the German word welsch refers to peoples who speak Romance languages, especially French; it is cognate with the English word Welsh, but does not have the same meaning).

After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the County of Ysenburg, together with the Oberamt of Offenbach and its member municipalities, passed to the Grand Duchy of Hesse.

It is the only station in Hesse that has loading tracks for a motorail service, connecting to several destinations in Austria, Italy and southern France.

The parade through town on Shrove Monday (Rosenmontag) — sometimes called Lumpenmontag in Neu-Isenburg — enjoys great popularity.