Phyllis Lambert is a licensed architect, studying under Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology. In 1979 she founded the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. She has contributed essays to numerous books and is the subject of the 2007 documentary film Citizen Lambert: Joan of Architecture. She lives in Montreal in a historic building with two bouviers des Flandres.
Her father, Samuel Bronfman, founded the Seagram distilling empire.