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Ismail Merchant characterized his personal traits as: impatience, stubbornness, guile, charm, and having the ability to part people from their money in order to achieve his own ends. Employing all of these, he embarked on a distinguished forty-four year career in filmmaking, film literature, and culinary innovation. With his filmmaking and personal partner, James Ivory, they created the longest independent film company on record, Merchant Ivory Productions. The company became noted for bringing high standards of taste, production values, and variety to the film industry.

Merchant was born in Bombay, India on December 1936 the son of a textile dealer. As a youth and through family connections, he met people in the film industry and decided that film- making would be his career choice. Later, he attended St Xavier's College in Bombay where he gained a reputation for putting on grandiose shows. After graduation, he moved to New York and studied at New York University where he earned an MBA all while supporting himself as a messenger at the U.N. Through connections made at the U.N., he was able to raise funds for the production of a short film, The Creation of Women, which was based on myths about the Hindu God Brahma. Moving to Los Angeles he managed through persistence and guile to have the film nominated for an Academy Award and later acceptance at the Cannes Film Festival. While in Los Angeles he read Ruth Jhabvalas novel, The Householder, and thought it would make a fine film.

Back in New York friends told him about a documentary film entitled The Sword and the Flute being shown at India House by a young American, James Ivory. Duly impressed by the beauty and scholarship of the film, he met with Ivory and found they both had ambitions to produce feature films and decided to form a partnership which was to last a lifetime. The two next set out for India where they successfully filmed The Householder and later, Shakespeare Wallah. Armed with two critically acclaimed films, Merchant in his role of producer was responsible for forty films and directed seven more during his lifetime.

Merchant also wrote a number of books about interesting events that took place while filming. He was also wanted to introduce Indian Cuisine to western audiences and produced a number of well received cook books on the subject.

In 2005 his health failed and he died at the age of sixty-eight.