Ulrich Freiherr von Schlippenbach was born in Kurzeme (Courland) on May 7, 1774. He came from the nobility, the son of a captain in the Prussian army. From 1790 Ulrich von Schlippenbach studied law and verbal sciences at the Universities of Königsberg and Leipzig.

When the Kosciuszko Uprising began in 1794, Ulrich von Schlippenbach enlisted in the Russian Imperial Army and remained there subsequently as a member of the St. Petersburg Guard, only to resign after the death of Catherine II.

Returning to Courland, Ulrich Hermann Freiherr von Schlippenbach served as a land notary of the district of Pilten from 1799 to 1807, then from 1807 to 1818 as Landrat of Pilten, and after the annexation of the Pilten district to Courland, in 1818, he was a counselor of the Courland Oberhofgericht, and from 1822 on also the chairman of the Courland Committee, which drafted a set of local laws for the provinces of the Baltic States. He owned the estates of Ulmalen and Jamaiken.

On von Schlippenbach's initiative, the Gesellschaft für Literatur und Kunst was founded in 1816 in Mitau (Jelgava).

Schlippenbach died on March 20, 1826, in the city of Mitau.