Painter, printmaker, and theater set designer Maria Agnes Elisabeth Voigt was born in Leipzig, Germany on August 5, 1893, the daughter of chemist and manufacturer Karl Herrmann Voigt (1858-1929) and his wife Marie Louise (born Saupe, 1862-1935). From 1904 to 1909 she attended the Servier School for Girls in Leipzig. Between 1910 and 1911 she lived in the United States, studying at the Morton McMichael School / William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia, USA.

From 1911 to 1917 she studied at the Royal (later called State) Academy for Graphic Arts and Book Trade in Leipzig. Following interim work as laboratory assistant, she attended the United State School of Fine and Applied Arts in Berlin - formerly the Academic College of Fine Arts at Stone Place - from 1919 to 1927. There, she studied with art professors Ferdinand Spiegel (anatomy), Ernst Moritz Geyger and Erich Wolffield. Subsequently, she spent two years as an Atelier student of Carl Hofer.

Trips in 1927 to Tyrol and Rome, and in 1929 to Italy, were funded by a grant from the artist Max Liebermann, awarded to her for her painting “Lamentation on the Cross” (1921). From 1928 to 1933 Voigt studied as a master student with Käthe Kollwitz and from 1930 to 1933, she was also active working as a set designer for the Old Theater Leipzig.

Between 1934-35 she received from the Prussian Academy of Arts the prestigious Romstipendium (Rome scholarship) to study at the Villa Massimo, a German art institute in Rome, Italy. Voigt was also a member of the Association of Berlin Artists from 1932 to 1942, and upon her return from Italy to Berlin in 1935 she worked as a graphic arts teacher at the association’s Drawing and Painting School, continuing her freelance work on the side.  

Voigt began summering in Osttirol, in the municipalities of Kals and Matrel in Tyrol, Austria, in 1936. She set up a studio there and between '36 nad 1945 much of her most important works emerged. In 1945, during the war, her studio in Berlin Motzstrasse was bombed twice, and much of her previous work was lost. Following the work, Voigt returned to her hometown, Leipzig.

In 1947 she was appointed as a lecturer at the State Academy for Graphic Arts and Printing Arts Leipzig, today called HGB, (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst). She began by teaching basic studies, and later as a professor for the degree program. She retired in 1958 and focused on freelance work once more.

Maria Agnes Elisabeth Voigt, known as Elisabeth Voigt died in Leipzig on November 1, 1977.