Voss was born at Sommersdorf in Mecklenburg-Strelitz as the son of a farmer. After attending the Gymnasium at Neubrandenburg from 1766—1769, he was obliged to accept a private tutorship in order to earn money to enable him to study at a university. At the invitation of Heinrich Christian Boie, whose attention he had attracted by poems contributed to the Göttinger Musenalmanach, he went to Göttingen in 1772. Here he studied philology and became one of the leading spirits in the famous Hain or Dichterbund.

In 1775 Boie made over to him the editorship of the Musenalmanach, which he continued to issue for several years. He married Boie's sister Ernestine in 1777, and in 1778 was appointed rector of the school at Otterndorf.

In 1782 Voss accepted the rectorship of the gymnasium at Eutin, where he remained until 1802. Retiring in this year with a pension of 600 thalers, he settled at Jena, and in 1805, although Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used his utmost endeavours to persuade him to stay, accepted a call to a professorship at Heidelberg. Here, in the enjoyment of a considerable salary, he devoted himself entirely to his literary labours, translations and antiquarian research until his death.

Voss was a man of a remarkably independent and vigorous character. From 1785 to 1795 he published in two volumes a collection of original poems, to which he afterwards made many additions. The best of these works is his idyllic poem Luise (1795), in which he sought, with much success, to apply the style and methods of classical poetry to the expression of modern German thought and sentiment.

In his Mythologische Briefe (2 vols., 1794), in which he attacked the ideas of Christian Gottlob Heine, in his Antisymbolik (2 vols., 1824—1826), written in opposition to Georg Friedrich Creuzer, and in other writings, Voss made important contributions to the study of mythology. He was also prominent as an advocate of the right of free judgment in religion, and at the time when some members of the Romantic school were being converted to the Roman Catholic Church, he produced a strong impression by a powerful article, in Sophronizon, on his friend Friedrich von Stolberg's repudiation of Protestantism (1819).

It is, however, as a translator that Voss chiefly owes his place in German literature. His translations indicate not only sound scholarship but a thorough mastery of the laws of German diction and rhythm. The most famous of his translations are those of Homer. Of these the best is the translation of the Odyssey, as originally issued in 1781. He also translated Hesiod, Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius and other classical poets, and he prepared a critical edition of Tibullus. From 1818 to 1829 was published, in 9 vols, a translation of William Shakespeare's plays, which Voss completed with the help of his sons Heinrich and Abraham, both of whom were scholars and writers of considerable ability.

Voss's Sämtliche poetische Werke were published by his son Abraham in 1835; new ed. 1850. A good selection is in A Sauer, Der Göttinger Dichterbund, vol. i. (Joseph Kürschner's Deutsche National-literatur, vol. 49, 1887). His Letters were also published by his son in 4 vols (1829—1833). Voss left a short autobiography, Abriß meines Lebens (1818). See also Wilhelm Herbst, Johann Heinrich Voß (3 vols, 1872—1876); Friedrich Heussner, Johann Heinrich Voß als Schulmann in Eutin. Festschrift zum hundertjährigen Gedenktage seiner Ankunft daselbst (1882).

According to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Voss is the most likely source for the phrase Wein, Weib und Gesang, or, in English, wine, women and song. Voss's full phrase is Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib und Gesang / Der bleibt ein Narr sein Lebelang ("He who loves not wine, women and song / Remains a fool his whole life long").