George Nathaniel Howard Jr. was born in Philadelphia on September 15, 1956. He started lessons at school at six, on clarinet and bassoon, and was soon steered into private study at the Settlement School of Music, where his first clarinet teacher, Shirley Curtis, had him working through Vivaldi and Handel's "Water Music" on clarinet, oboe and bassoon by the time he was ten. At thirteen he talked his public-school music teacher into lending him a tenor saxophone for the summer and taught himself on a Bundy student horn. He joined a neighborhood R&B band called the Citations, playing James Brown and Kool and the Gang, while his father pushed Charlie Parker and John Coltrane records at him at home. Coltrane and Wayne Shorter became his models, and he settled on the soprano saxophone partly because it reminded him of the bassoon. He kept up private classical lessons until fifteen, when his teacher dropped him after catching him playing jazz licks; he said he wanted a place where he could play and grow, and did not think the classical world offered one.

By fifteen he was on the road with Philadelphia-area rhythm and blues acts, among them Blue Magic, First Choice and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. Through the 1970s he worked as a sideman with local soul groups and became a session player for fellow Philadelphians Leon Huff and Dexter Wansel. In 1979 he joined Grover Washington Jr. on tour, a job that led to his own career and to eight years in Los Angeles before he moved to Atlanta around 1992. Washington was one of his idols, and Howard honored him in 1994 with the song "Grover's Groove."

According to his obituary in the Los Angeles Times, he had been turned down by 38 record companies before he landed a deal in 1982 with Studio City's TBA Records, an imprint of Palo Alto Records. His debut, Asphalt Gardens (Palo Alto Jazz, 1982), was produced by Howard and Kae Williams Jr., mastered by Bob Ludwig, and included a version of Stevie Wonder's "Rocket Love"; it reached No. 25 on the Billboard jazz albums chart. Steppin' Out (TBA, 1984), co-produced with keyboardist Dean Gant, went to No. 9 on that chart and No. 39 on the R&B chart. The rhythm section on it was Keni Burke and Nathan East on bass, Leon "Ndugu" Chancler on drums and David Williams on guitar, and the program mixed Howard originals with soprano-sax readings of Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" and "Human Nature." The closing "Dream Ride" was pushed in Britain in 1984 by the disc jockey Robbie Vincent and is still prized among soul and jazz collectors there.

The commercial peak came in the middle of the decade. Dancing in the Sun (TBA, 1985) spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Traditional Jazz Albums chart; it covered Lionel Richie's "Love Will Find a Way" and Diana Ross's "Telephone," with Billy Childs, Todd Cochran and Paulinho da Costa among the players. Love Will Follow (TBA, 1986), built around Kenny Loggins's title song, also reached No. 1, along with No. 22 on the R&B chart, and won the Soul Train Music Award for Best Jazz Album, Solo, at the March 23, 1987 ceremony in Santa Monica, ahead of Miles Davis's Tutu, Kenny G's Duotones and Sade's Promise. In the same year, 1986, he was the saxophone voice on Patti LaBelle's "Kiss Away the Pain," which reached No. 13 on the R&B singles chart.

Howard moved to MCA for A Nice Place to Be (1986), which spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Traditional Jazz Albums chart; George Duke produced two of its tracks, Stanley Clarke played on three, and the program included a version of Sade's "Sweetest Taboo" and the television theme "Spenser for Hire." Then came Reflections (1988), his own production, which topped the Contemporary Jazz Albums chart and earned him a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Instrumental Performance (Orchestra, Group or Soloist) at the 31st Grammy Awards. It includes his instrumental reading of "Love Will Conquer All." Personal (1990) carried his biggest hit single, "Shower You With Love," with Duke among the guests. When GRP took over many MCA artists' contracts in 1990, he went with them, and the label brought out one album a year for the next four years: Love and Understanding (1991), a No. 1 Contemporary Jazz record produced with Victor Bailey; Do I Ever Cross Your Mind? (1992), with Clarke, James Ingram and Phil Perry; When Summer Comes (1993), with Duke, Everette Harp, Sonny Emory, Paul Jackson Jr. and Clarke; and A Home Far Away (1994). The Recording Academy lists two Grammy nominations for him: the Reflections nomination, and a 1993 nomination at the 35th Grammy Awards for Best R&B Instrumental Performance, for "Just the Way I Feel" from Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?. That album also earned a Soul Train Music Award nomination for Best Jazz Album, which went to Najee.

His last years were hard ones. In 1996 his mother became ill and died and his marriage ended in divorce, and he made Attitude Adjustment (GRP, 1996) out of that upheaval, saying he wrote it as he lived it. He performed at a hospitality house for the continent of Africa during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, had been to Africa several times, and said he put a tribute to the African drum on every album. GRP gathered his first five years on the label, plus some MCA recordings and two unreleased tracks, on The Very Best of George Howard and Then Some (1997). He told JazzTimes in early 1998 that he was ready to widen his focus, and Midnight Mood (GRP, January 1998) pointed that way: he produced it and added vocals, with Stanley Clarke, Jonathan Butler, Paul Jackson Jr., Lenny Castro, Munyungo Jackson and Sonny Emory among the musicians, and a multi-part piece called "Africa" at its center.

George Howard passed away from colon cancer at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta on March 20, 1998, at the age of 41. He was survived by his daughter and two sisters. Blue Note issued There's a Riot Goin' On, a ten-track reworking of the 1971 Sly and the Family Stone album, in its cover series about two months after his death.

Howard played soprano saxophone with a smooth, vocal tone that came more from his R&B and soul apprenticeship than from the bebop tradition, though John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter were the players he named as his models and he went back to Coltrane's A Love Supreme in his last years. His records were built on dance-floor and quiet-storm grooves, programmed keyboards and covers of pop and soul songs by Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Diana Ross, Kenny Loggins and Eurythmics, and he produced or co-produced most of his own albums. The Los Angeles Times credited him with helping popularize the "quiet storm" and "smooth jazz" styles, and noted that, like Kenny G, he was widely criticized by jazz writers for blending fusion with pop rhythms and melodies. AllMusic, which files him under crossover jazz, jazz-pop, quiet storm and smooth jazz, describes him as a soprano player whose mix of jazz, funk and soul brought him mainstream success in the 1980s and 1990s. His reviews were uneven, but the audience was steady: he sold consistently, remained a draw at clubs and festivals, and had recently been part of the Jazz Explosion tour when he died. By his own account he was a working musician who loved Coltrane, George Duke and Miles Davis, whose "Tutu" he played live, and who said he had found a niche and wanted room to stretch beyond it. His career sat on the smooth jazz and R&B side of the crossover line, resting on a real jazz apprenticeship.