Howard was a film actress and soap opera star before breaking into journalism.​ In 1960 she scored the first major interview with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the United Nations. She was hired by ABC news as a reporter and subsequently became the anchor for ABC's noontime news broadcast, "The NewsHour with Lisa Howard." Her two specials on Cuba, in 1963 and 1964, were the most substantive coverage of Castro's revolution in the early 1960s. She died in 1965.