Richard Bushman was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, the son of a department store executive; and he was reared in Portland, Oregon. Bushman received his AB, AM, and PhD degrees from Harvard University, where he studied with distinguished early American historian Bernard Bailyn. Bushman taught at Harvard, Brigham Young University, Boston University, and the University of Delaware before joining the history faculty at Columbia. During the 2007-08 academic year, Bushman served as Howard W. Hunter Visiting Professor in Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University and held a Huntington Library fellowship. Bushman married fellow historian Claudia Lauper Bushman on August 19, 1955; and they are the parents of four sons (Richard, Karl, Serge, and Ben) and two daughters (Clarissa and Margaret).

Bushman is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He interrupted his undergraduate studies at Harvard to serve as a missionary in New England and Atlantic Canada, and he has held various positions within the Mormon Church, including Seminary teacher, bishop, stake president, and Stake Patriarch.

Bushman's scholarship includes studies of early American social, cultural, and political history, American religious history, and the history of the LDS Church, and his books have won numerous awards. In 1968, Bushman's Character and Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 won the prestigious Bancroft Prize, an award given by the trustees of Columbia University for the year's best book on American history. Bushman has also received the Phi Alpha Theta prize, and Evans Biography Awards, administered by the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies at Utah State University. In 2006, Bushman received the Mormon History Association's annual 2006 Best Book award for his biography Rough Stone Rolling. Bushman has held Guggenheim, Huntington, National Humanities Center, and National Endowment for Humanities fellowships; and he served as president of the Mormon History Association (1985—1986).