Thomas Fredrick Browne was born on October 30, 1954, in Queens, New York, and grew up in the Jamaica neighborhood. He took piano lessons from the age of 11, then moved to trumpet after listening to his collection of jazz albums, and played his first gig at a Queens club called The Village Door. As a student at New York's High School of Music and Art he became a regular on the city's jazz scene, and his biography on All About Jazz adds that he studied on a scholarship with Murray Karpilovsky and learned from Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, Jimmy Nottingham and Richard Williams.

His first professional job, in 1975, was with the keyboardist Weldon Irvine. He then worked with the saxophonist Sonny Fortune, appearing on Fortune's album Infinity Is, and with the organist Lonnie Smith; Wikipedia credits the Fortune association with first bringing him notice. In 1978 he led a quintet at the Breezin' Lounge, an uptown club tied to George Benson, whose former manager Jimmy Boyd became Browne's manager. After several recording offers, Browne was introduced by Earl Klugh to Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen, who had just founded GRP Records, and signed with the new label, whose records were distributed by Arista.

Browne Sugar (1979), produced by Grusin and Rosen, reached number six on Billboard's jazz albums chart and paired Browne's trumpet and flugelhorn with a New York studio band that included the bassist Marcus Miller, who wrote two of its pieces, and the saxophonist Michael Brecker; it also covered Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On." Love Approach (1980) went to number one on both the jazz and R&B album charts and reached number 18 on the Billboard 200. Its single "Funkin' for Jamaica (N.Y.)," written with the singer Toni Smith, who also took the vocal, is a memoir of the Jamaica neighborhood where Browne grew up, and he came up with the idea at his parents' home. The record reached number one on Billboard's R&B singles chart, number nine on the dance chart and the top ten in the United Kingdom, though it never entered the Hot 100. Magic (1981) reached number two on the jazz albums chart and carried "Thighs High (Grip Your Hips and Move)," a number four R&B single with Smith again on vocals, and Yours Truly (1981), also produced by Grusin and Rosen, brought "Fungi Mama" and "Bye Gones."

Browne then moved to Arista alone. Rockin' Radio (1983) turned toward electro-funk, its title track written by Michael Jonzun and Maurice Starr of the Jonzun Crew and a number 11 R&B hit, and Tommy Gun (1984) included "Secret Fantasy," with Siedah Garrett singing lead and Starr producing; the album reached number 22 on the jazz albums chart. Alongside these records he played trumpet on albums by Fuse One (Silk, 1981, and Ice, 1984), Bob James's live All Around the Town (1981), Jeff Lorber's It's a Fact (1982), Joe Sample's The Hunter (1983), where he takes a trumpet solo, and Roy Ayers's In the Dark (1984), and he appeared on Dave Grusin's GRP All-Stars concert album Live in Japan (1980). In 1986, by his own account, he became an evangelical Christian and changed labels so that he could record music that reflected his faith, which produced No Longer I for Malaco in 1988, with Bob Baldwin on keyboards and arrangements and the flutist Bobbi Humphrey among the guests. His biography says that aviation then became his main career, and that he flew for many years as a charter and airline captain, most recently for a FedEx feeder carrier.

He returned to recording in 1994 on Hip Bop Records with Mo' Jamaica Funk, followed by Another Shade of Browne (1996), a straight-ahead set produced by Bob Belden with Ron Carter, Idris Muhammad, the pianist Larry Goldings and the tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson, and R 'n' Browne (1999), also produced by Belden, with guests including Christian McBride and Dianne Reeves. S' Up (2010), released by Cheetah, was produced by Teruo Nakamura and co-produced by Jay Rodriguez and Browne. Later releases include the EP Legacy (2016), the album Come What May (2020), and the singles "Impulse" (2024) and "Elemental" (2025, with Gail Jhonson). A 1991 remix of "Funkin' for Jamaica" returned to the UK and Dutch charts, and the original has been sampled by Tone Loc on "I Got It Goin' On" (1989), by Coolio on "1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin' New)" (1995), and by Mariah Carey on "Don't Stop (Funkin' 4 Jamaica)" (2001).

Browne is still performing. He was booked to play in Richmond, Virginia, on September 26, 2025, and as of November 2, 2026 his All About Jazz page lists a date in Hampton, Virginia, on November 14, 2026, and a run of UK dates with the Brit Funk Association from February 9 to 13, 2027. A version of that biography from around 2010 also placed him on tour with Roy Ayers, Patrice Rushen and Wayne Henderson.

Browne plays trumpet and flugelhorn, and on his GRP recordings he set them against the synthesizer-and-bass grooves that Grusin and Rosen built with players such as Marcus Miller, Bernard Wright and the drummers Buddy Williams and Omar Hakim. Billboard placed his early albums on its jazz, R&B and pop charts at once, and the music sits between jazz-funk and R&B: "Funkin' for Jamaica" is a dance record in which the trumpet carries the hook, and Rockin' Radio leans on drum machines and synthesizers. He has also recorded straight-ahead jazz, as on Another Shade of Browne. The jazz-funk records are the ones that have lasted, partly because "Funkin' for Jamaica" has been sampled repeatedly in hip-hop and dance music. AllMusic rated Browne Sugar and Magic four stars out of five, Love Approach three and Rockin' Radio two and a half.