Averil Margaret Lysaght was born on April 14, 1905, in Mokoia, near Hawera, New Zealand.

She was a New Zealand biologist, science historian and artist. Initially educated at home by governesses, she was sent to Chilton House Private Girls Boarding School in Wellington when she was 12. She graduated from Victoria University College, Wellington (B.Sc., 1928; M.Sc., 1929 in zoology). From 1931 to 1932, she worked as a temporary assistant in zoology at Victoria University College. She continued her postgraduate research at the Rothamsted Experimental Station in London and was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of London in 1935. She also undertook artistic training, first at Nottingham School of Art and later at St. Martins School of Art in London. From 1935 to 1938, she worked at the Plymouth laboratory of the Marine Biological Association of the UK and the Imperial Institute of Entomology. Between 1936 and 1943, she published five papers in parasitology, including two on trematode parasites of gastropods. During World War II, Lysaght lectured at the university colleges of Hull and Nottingham and worked in the Ministry of Information in the China section. This latter work led to a post with the British Council (1945–1946). From 1947 to 1948, she was employed as assistant editor of the zoology section of Chambers’ Encyclopaedia. She catalogued all the bird paintings executed on all of Cook's voyages, researched the British Museum of Natural History collection of Sydney Parkinson's paintings and drawings, and continued to work on this project for over twenty years. Years of research culminated in publishing "The Book of Birds: Five Centuries of Bird Illustration" in 1975. In 1971, Lysaght’s monumental "Joseph Banks in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1766" was published. She received an honorary D. Litt. from the Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1979.

She never married and died on August 21, 1981, in London, England.