Lisa Inouye was born in Caldwell, Idaho and graduated from Wilder High School. She received her MD degree at the University of Pittsburgh. She completed residency and chief residency at Naval Medical Center, Portsmouth, Virginia, and a general internal medicine fellowship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with a Master of Public Health from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. She served as an internal medicine program director in the Navy for 11 years and retired from the Navy after 22 years. She also served as program director for the UW Boise internal medicine residency for 3 years, and is a fellow and past governor of the Idaho American College of Physicians. Currently, she practices primary care and inpatient medicine at the Boise VA. She is core faculty for the UW Boise internal medicine residency, and a clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Her husband is a family medicine physician, and they have 17-year-old twins. They also have three cats, two ferrets and a rabbit.