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After studying piano and composition in Melbourne and Munich, Mark Foster held positions as chef de chant and assistant conductor at the Zurich Opera House before being appointed solo répétiteur at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. These posts enabled him to collaborate with leading conductors and stage directors, including Daniel Barenboim, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Daniel Mesguich, Götz Friedrich, Frank Corsaro, and Hans Neuenfels.

In 1983, he became Director of Musical Studies at the Lyon Opera, where he worked closely with the then music director John Eliot Gardiner. During this period, he composed his first children's opera, La Grotte d'Ali, to a libretto by Richard Demarcy. In 1985, he founded the chamber orchestra Ensemble Forum, dedicated to contemporary music. This marked the beginning of a career as a guest conductor, leading orchestras and operas throughout Europe (Milan, Vienna, Frankfurt, Madrid, Lisbon, Lucerne, etc.).

He taught conducting at the Bartók Festival in Hungary for seven years alongside Peter Eötvös. He also served as artistic director of the L'été musical Loire-Forez festival from 1992 to 1996, before being appointed head of the Orchestre des Pays de Savoie in 1993. During the same period, he was musical adviser to the Villa Medici in Rome, before becoming principal conductor of the Orchestre de Caen in 2002. He later conducted the Ensemble Apostrophe of the Nice Opera Philharmonic Orchestra.

Throughout his career, he has maintained an intense activity as a pianist, both as a soloist and accompanist, and has continuously composed and arranged music for a wide range of ensembles. Over the last ten years of his life, he devoted himself primarily to composition, producing various projects in musical theatre, sacred music, and chamber music.

His compositions built on the innovations of contemporary music while remaining accessible and firmly rooted in tonality. They were conceived to appeal both to discerning listeners and to a broader audience. In keeping with this artistic vision, he completed in 2022 a Mass for percussion, choir, soloists and orchestra, followed by a cycle of three piano pieces premiered in Paris in 2025 by Louise Bessette. His eclectic musical language reached its fullest expression in his final work, Marlowe and Marlowe, inspired by the life of the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, in which Mark Foster brought together his lifelong love of Elizabethan theatre, musical theatre and avant-garde music.