Dussek’s first musical teacher was his father (Jan Dusík) from whom he began to learn the piano at the age of 5, and the organ at the age of 9. He appears to have lived with his parents in Czáslav until the age of 17. He then moved to Jihlava, and the Jesuit Seminary in Kutná Hora for further studies, and concluded his education in Prague (where he also studied philosophy and theology) in 1778.

1780–1782 he moved to employed as organist and music teacher in Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands, he was in Amsterdam in 1782 and The Hague in 1783. He began his career as a piano virtuoso in Berlin in 1784, Mainz (1785) and St. Petersburg (1786). He left Russia when implicated in a plot against the Empress Catherine II, and went to Paris from 1786 to 1789, apart from a concert tour in Italy. He fled Paris in 1789 for London, where he lived for 10 years. In 1792 he married the daughter of the music publisher and composer Domenico Corri.

The firm became bankrupt and he moved to Hamburg (1800–1802). After a series of concerts in his native country, he entered the service of Prince Louis Ferdinand, until the latter was killed at the Battle of Saalfeld in 1806 during the Franco–Prussian War.

In 1807 he returned to Paris where he remained until his death at the castle in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1812, at the comparatively early age of 52, having been affected during his final years by profound melanchololia and gross obesity.