Porter was educated at Worcester Academy, Massachusetts and then at Yale, where he wrote several comedies as well as writing songs for the Yale football team - which are still sung at Yale. After Yale he began to study law at Harvard at his grandfather's insistence, but later switched to music. His first full-scale production was the comic opera See America First which was a disaster, and therefore had a very brief Broadway run in 1916.

For the next twelve years his life was spent mostly abroad and in 1919 he married a rich socialite, Linda Lee Thomas, travelling constantly between Paris, Venice, London and the Riviera in the 1920s. His Broadway career began in earnest with Paris (1928) and Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929). The 1930s saw a remarkable succession of Cole Porter successes on Broadway including The New Yorkers (1930), Gay Divorce (1932), Nymph Errant (1933), Anything Goes (1934), Jubilee (1935), Red, Hot and Blue (1936) and Du Barry was a Lady (1939). His Hollywood film scores included Born to Dance (1936) and Rosalie (1937).

In 1938 he suffered a serious riding accident which dogged him for the rest of his life but his career continued in both theatre and films. His Broadway successes continued with Panama Hattie (1940), Let's Face It (1941) and Something for the Boys (1943). Later productions brought Porter only mediocre success but Kiss Me Kate in 1948 restored his reputation as the supreme creator of musical comedies. His later Hollywood work included The Pirate (1948), High Society (1956) and Les Girls (1957). His last work was his only contribution for television - a musical version of Aladdin (1958).