BMW E36 fender removal is not very difficult. Typically fender removal will only be required when the vehicle has been in a collision or like in this example where I am parting out the BMW.
Begin with the top of the fender. There are two bolts at the hood hinge. You may need to pull away some of the plastic cowl to get to these bolts. There are plastic screws that hold in the cowl. 
The top bolts will either be torx or metric, hopefully for your sake they are metric because the torx tends to strip.
Open the door as wide as it will go and there are two torx bolts there.
There are also three screws where the nose panel attaches to the fender. To get to the screws you will need to remove part of the fender liner.
There are also two 10 mm bolts underneath the fender bolting it to the frame.
That is pretty much it! Hopefully there is not a ton of glue at the bottom of the fender, there was on my driver's side because of a previous wreck and it proved difficult to remove.
Total time: No more than 30-40 minutes.