Susanne Binninger was born in Nördlingen in 1966. She studied philosophy, art history and visual communication (specialization on photography and film), at Kassel university (1988-91), as well as at Hochschule der Künste Berlin and FH Berlin (1991/92). After graduating in 1992, she enrolled at Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen 'Konrad Wolf' in Potsdam-Babelsberg to study directing. She completed her studies in 2000. While still in school, she made her first feature-length documentary "Die Kandidaten" (1997) that featured candidates of the popular TV show "Wetten, dass…?". "Die Kandidaten" premiered as the opening film of Duisburger Filmwoche 1997 and was received very well by critics. Binninger's thesis film "Kalte Krieger" (2000) which portrayed adolescents from the radical left scene in Berlin in the decade preceding the fall of the wall was nominated for the First Steps Award.

From 2002 to 2005, Binninger worked for U5-Filmproduktion Frankfurt and others where she developed and produced a variety of documentary films and serials. She also worked as a director, making the ten-episode series "Damals in der DDR: Vereint für immer" (2005, co-director: Britt Beyer) about individual fates in East Germany after reunification and the documentary "UTC – Die Welt um Mitternacht: Bad" (2007) that relates four stories from around the world about bathing and spa culture.
Together with Andreas Goldstein, Susanne Binninger founded the production company "Oktoberfilm" in 2008 through which she produced the documentary short "Der Müll und das Mädchen" (2011), the documentary TV series "Mädchengeschichten" that aired on 3sat, and Britt Beyer's award-winning big screen documentary "Werden Sie Deutscher" (2011).

Binninger's documentary feature "Reine Männersache" (2011, TV) for which she visited places where images of masculinity are formed, premiered at Dokfest Kassel and was nominated for a Grimme-Preis in 2012. Her cinematic release "Fighter" (2016), about mixed martial arts and the so-called "cage-fighting", was awarded the Gedankenaufschluss-Preis at DOK Fest Leipzig. In May 2017, "Fighter" opened in German movie theaters.

Besides working as producer, writer and director, Susanne Binninger teaches at Filmuniversität Babelsberg, Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin as well as Freie Schule Filmarche in Berlin.