She began her acting career on stage in South Africa and then went on to act in the London theatre as a teenager. Lister began working in films in 1944, and appeared in such movies as The Limping Man, The Cruel Sea and The Deep Blue Sea.
She had a regular role in the first series of the BBC radio comedy Hancock's Half Hour. She starred in the BBC television series The Very Merry Widow from 1967 to 1968. (Later series of this programme were titled The Very Merry Widow - and How!)
Lister was performing until three years before her death, touring with her highly successful one-woman show about Noël Coward.
She belonged to the British Catholic Stage Guild.
She had been awarded the Naledi Award, a lifetime achievement award for her services to the theatre in South Africa.
In 1951, Moira Lister married Jacques de Gachassin-Lafite Vicomte d’Orthez, a French officer of the Spahis, and hero of the Rif War; they had two daughters, Chantal and Christobel.
Jacques, Vicomte d'Orthez (b. Brussels, 1905 - d. Paris, 1989) was the son of André Gachassin-Lafite, Vicomte d'Orthez (23 June 1868, Rouen - 2 December 1924, Paris), Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur, captain of the 3rd Regiment of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, Assistant-Attaché Militaire at the Embassy of France at Brussels, then member of the High Commission of the Ministry of War in Le Creusot (1915-1918).
His mother was Louise van Dievoet (1880-1964), a descendent of an old patrician family of the old lineages of Brussels, the van Dievoet. She was the sister of the famous Belgian architect Henri van Dievoet, and her grandmother Hortense Poelaert (married to Eugène van Dievoet), was the sister of Joseph Poelaert one of the greatest architects in Europe.
