Godwin Louis was born in Harlem, New York, to Haitian parents and grew up moving between Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He started on saxophone at age nine, and the Haitian folkloric material he absorbed as a child, rara street-band horns, vodou drumming, kompa, has stayed audible in his writing ever since. He went on to Berklee College of Music and then the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance (now the Herbie Hancock Institute), where his teachers and mentors included Herbie Hancock, Terence Blanchard, Ron Carter, Jack DeJohnette and David Baker. In September 2013 he was one of three finalists at the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition, held at the Kennedy Center in front of a judging panel that included Jimmy Heath, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Watson, Jane Ira Bloom and Branford Marsalis; Melissa Aldana took first prize and Tivon Pennicott second, with Louis placing third.

Through the 2010s he built a career as a first-call sideman while also touring internationally as a bandleader in his own right, performing across Africa, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia. He recorded and toured with the Ethiopian vibraphonist and "father of Ethio-jazz" Mulatu Astatke, appearing on Mulatu Steps Ahead (Strut, 2010), and with Boston's long-running Either/Orchestra, the American big band most responsible for reintroducing Ethiopian music to Western jazz audiences, on Mood Music for Time Travellers (Accurate Records, 2010). He became a recurring voice in drummer Herlin Riley's bands, on New Direction (Mack Avenue, 2016) and Perpetual Optimism (Mack Avenue, 2019), and in pianist Victor Gould's, appearing on four of Gould's albums between 2016 and 2021 and eventually co-producing one of them. He also recorded repeatedly with pianist Julian Shore, trumpeter and Trinidadian bandleader Etienne Charles, and drummer Obed Calvaire, who in turn plays drums on both of Louis's own leader albums.

Louis released his debut as a leader, Global, on his own Blue Room Music imprint in February 2019: a sprawling double-disc set built from Haitian, Guinean, Brazilian and Israeli source material, arranged for a large rotating cast that included vibraphonist Joel Ross as a sideman. His second leader album, Psalms and Proverbs (Blue Room Music, August 2024), turned toward gospel and scripture, setting psalm texts and Haitian and Ewe hymn material for a core band led by his own alto and soprano saxophone, with Calvaire on drums. In between, his arranging drew wider recognition: he received a 2024 Grammy nomination in the Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals category for his arrangement of "Fenestra," a track on Cécile McLorin Salvant's Mélusine (Nonesuch, 2023), on which he also plays alto saxophone and contributes whistle and vocals.

In 2024 Louis became the saxophonist in bassist Or Bareket's working quartet, joining pianist Jeremy Corren and drummer Savannah Harris for Yōm (Enja Records, October 2024), recorded at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, Connecticut, and produced by Joel Ross. Louis plays both alto and soprano saxophone across the record and shares a group arranging credit with the other three band members, a genuine core-quartet role rather than a guest appearance. Away from the bandstand, Louis is an assistant professor in Berklee's woodwinds department, teaches at BackCountry Jazz's summer camps in Connecticut, founded Experience Ayiti, a nonprofit dedicated to cultural exchange and arts education in Haiti, and opened the Godwin Louis Rooftop Club in Lomé, Togo, in 2021, where he had earlier served as musical director of the Homeland Jazz Festival.

Louis's playing on both alto and soprano saxophone is built around a big, vocal tone and long, gospel-shaped phrases, an approach that reflects his church background as directly as his time at the Monk Institute. His writing and arranging habitually cross Haitian folkloric forms, rara horn lines, kompa rhythm, vodou-derived percussion patterns, with mainstream jazz harmony rather than treating them as separate idioms, a synthesis closest in spirit to what Either/Orchestra and Mulatu Astatke did for Ethiopian material a generation earlier. That same arranging instinct, rather than his saxophone playing, has drawn his widest outside recognition to date: a 2024 Grammy nomination for reworking a single track on Cécile McLorin Salvant's Mélusine. On Yōm with Or Bareket's quartet, his arranging is collective rather than singular, one voice among four co-arrangers, which suits a working band whose sound depends on shared writing rather than a lead composer.