Norihiro Inoue was a Japanese actor and voice actor from Kanagawa Prefecture. He was a graduate of Hosei University. Before becoming widely known for his voice work in anime, Inoue began his career in the mid-1980s, appearing in numerous live-action television dramas, films, and stage productions. His live-action credits included several of NHK's prestigious Taiga dramas, such as Tokugawa Yoshinobu and Aoi Tokugawa Sandai.

Inoue made his major debut in anime in 1998 with the lead role of Taichi Hiraga Keaton in the series Master Keaton. This performance established him as a prominent voice actor. He continued to take on a wide range of characters, often portraying calm, intelligent, or authoritative figures. He voiced Kazuma Sohma in the 2001 adaptation of Fruits Basket and Marco in the 2003 series Gunslinger Girl. In the Harukanaru Toki no Naka de franchise, he provided the voice for the Emperor in both the television series and the 2006 film Harukanaru Toki no Naka de: Maihitoyo. He was also the voice of the bus driver in Rosario + Vampire and played Aki in The World is Still Beautiful. In the series Glass Maiden, known as Crystal Blaze, he voiced the character Kitō.

One of his most internationally recognized roles was that of the cunning and calculating Schneizel El Britannia, the half-brother of the protagonist, in the hit anime Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion and its sequel R2. He also voiced the character Takahata T. Takamichi in the Mahō Sensei Negima! franchise. In addition to anime, Inoue had an extensive and prolific career in dubbing foreign films and television series into Japanese. He was the regular Japanese voice of actor Anthony Edwards, most notably for his role as Dr. Mark Greene in the long-running medical drama ER. He also dubbed Colin Firth as Mark Darcy in the Bridget Jones films, Jude Law in Gattaca, and provided voices for characters in major franchises such as Star Trek: Enterprise, Iron Man, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Agent Carter.

Norihiro Inoue passed away due to esophageal cancer on February 28, 2022, at the age of 63. He left behind a substantial body of work that spanned live-action performance and a wide array of voice roles in both animation and foreign-language dubbing.