Lynn Robert Schroeder was born in Davenport, Iowa on December 7, 1929. He got his BFA in printmaking at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. Schroeder spent 4 year in the US Navy, after which he studied printmaking with Mauricio Lasansky at the University of Iowa, graduating in 1960 with an MFA. Schroeder moved to Tucson, Arizona where he had been hired to teach printmaking and consulted with students studying typography at the University of Arizona between 1960 and 1987. Schroeder stopped doing printmaking after retiring in 1987.

Lynn Schroeder is married to artist/printmaker Sheila Pitt, who currently teaches relief printmaking at the University of Arizona despite having been paralyzed from the neck down in a horse accident in 2008.