Born to a Jewish family in Cleveland, Ohio, Heller served in the United States Army and attended college at the University of Southern California, and started working in the agency business in 1963. After working at Coast Artists, Associated Booking, and the Chartwell, he opened the Heller-Fischel Agency in Beverly Hills, California which grossed $1.9 million during its first year, $3.7 million the second, $5.8 the third, and over $7 million its fourth year of operation representing rock stars the Who, Grand Funk Railroad, Black Sabbath, Humble Pie, and Black Oak Arkansas as well as writers at the time Carly Simon, Van Morrison, and Cat Stevens. He later bought out partner Don Fischel who went on to package independent TV productions. Heller believed that a key factor in keeping acts working between or after a hit record was to not be greedy and package his own clients together, but tour them in salable packages with other headline acts that were clients of other agencies.

In the 1980s, Heller began managing acts on the nascent Los Angeles Hip Hop scene, many of whom recorded for the now defunct Macola in Hollywood. He managed both C.I.A., which Ice Cube was a member of, and the World Class Wreckin’ Cru, which included Dr. Dre and DJ Yella. On March 3, 1987, he met Eazy-E, and the two became co-founders of Ruthless. Under the direction of Heller and Eazy, Ruthless had 6 RIAA-certified Platinum releases in three years: Supersonic (J. J. Fad), Eazy-Duz-It (Eazy-E), Straight Outta Compton (N.W.A), No One Can Do It Better (The D.O.C.), Michel’le’s self-titled debut, and Niggaz4Life (N.W.A).

N.W.A broke up in 1991, with Ice Cube and Dr. Dre departing and aiming criticism at Heller and Eazy in diss tracks. However, Ice Cube’s diss tracks only occurred after the remaining members of N.W.A. initiated a feud on the 1990 E.P. 100 Miles and Runnin’. Both Ice Cube and Dre accused Heller of breaking up N.W.A with the way he managed the group. Dr. Dre later recalled: “The split came when Jerry Heller got involved. He played the divide and conquer game. Instead of taking care of everybody, he picked Eazy to handle it. And Eazy was like, ‘I’m taken care of, so fuck it’.” Ice Cube, in his diss track “No Vaseline”, accused Eazy of being too much under Heller’s influence and both of them exploiting the rest of the group: “Eazy-E, MC Ren, Dr. Dre, and Yella”. Also, “It’s a case of divide and conquer, ’cause you let a Jew break up my crew” and “house nigga gotta run and hide, yellin’ Compton but you moved to Riverside.” He married Gayle Steiner, his girlfriend since 1990, in 1996. They divorced in 2014.

Heller’s memoir, Ruthless: A Memoir, written with Gil Reavill, was published by Simon & Schuster/Simon Spotlight Entertainment in 2006. In the work, Heller addressed many events that he had previously remained silent on.

In a 2013 interview, on the Murder Master Music Show, Heller said that Eazy-E had planned on murdering Suge Knight, but Heller was able to talk him out of it. Heller said he was in his office when Eazy-E told him, “You know this guy Suge Knight? Well, I’m gonna kill him … This guy’s gonna be a problem, and I’m gonna kill him.” Heller said that he told Eazy it didn’t make sense to kill Knight and it wouldn’t be worth the risk, citing that Ruthless was the most successful startup record company ever, making $10 million a month with only six employees and, as Heller put it, “not even having a typewriter in their office.” Heller said that, given everything that had transpired afterward, he regrets talking Eazy out of it. “You know something? I should have let him kill him. I would have done the world a favor. He would have done it for sure by himself. He always rolled by himself and he was fearless. I think that he was going to go do it. I took him seriously. He was right and I was wrong.”

Heller was portrayed by actor Paul Giamatti in the 2015 N.W.A biopic film Straight Outta Compton.

In October 2015, Heller filed a lawsuit against several members of N.W.A, NBCUniversal and others involved in the production of Straight Outta Compton. He has also filed lawsuits against rappers Dr. Dre and Ice Cube. The lawsuit claims “the film is littered with false statements that harm the reputation of (Heller) and aim to ridicule and lower him in the opinion of the community and to deter third persons from associating or dealing with him.” Producers for the film, which included Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, filed a countersuit in February 2016 to have portions of the Heller suit thrown out. In June 2016, U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald dismissed nearly all of Heller’s lawsuit, but agreed to allow one key claim to continue. Despite Heller’s death in September 2016, his attorney Mickey Shapiro has indicated the lawsuit will continue. In September, 2018, a California judge dismissed Heller’s lawsuit two years after his death.

Heller was portrayed by Jamie Kennedy in the 2016 film Surviving Compton. In contrast to the negative portrayal in Straight Outta Compton, Heller is portrayed in the film as defending Michel’le against violent treatment from Dr. Dre, which led writer Ben Westhoff to say that Heller “somehow comes off better than anyone else”.

Heller was driving on September 2, 2016 when he suffered a heart attack, crashed his car, and later died at a hospital in Thousand Oaks, California. He was 75 years old. Heller’s lawyer blamed the depiction of him in the film Straight Outta Compton as a contributing factor in his death, with TMZ stating the film placed him “under a tremendous amount of stress.”