The daughter of education activist Ziauddin Yousafzai, she was born to a Yusufzai Pashtun family in Swat and was named after the Afghan folk heroine Malalai of Maiwand. Considering Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Barack Obama, and Benazir Bhutto as her role models, she was also inspired by her father's thoughts and humanitarian work. In early 2009, when she was 11, she wrote a blog under her pseudonym Gul Makai for the BBC Urdu to detail her life during the Taliban's occupation of Swat. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times documentary about her life as the Pakistan Armed Forces launched Operation Rah-e-Rast against the militants in Swat. In 2011, she received Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize. She rose in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by activist Desmond Tutu.

On 9 October 2012, while on a bus in Swat District after taking an exam, Yousafzai and two other girls were shot by a Taliban gunman in an assassination attempt targeting her for her activism; the gunman fled the scene. She was struck in the head by a bullet and remained unconscious and in critical condition at the Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology, but her condition later improved enough for her to be transferred to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, UK. The attempt on her life sparked an international outpouring of support. Deutsche Welle reported in January 2013 that she may have become "the most famous teenager in the world". Weeks after the attempted murder, a group of 50 leading Muslim clerics in Pakistan issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her. Governments, human rights organizations and feminist groups subsequently condemned the Pakistani Taliban. In response, the Taliban further denounced Yousafzai, indicating plans for a possible second assassination attempt which the Taliban felt was justified as a religious obligation. This sparked another international outcry.

After her recovery, Yousafzai became a more prominent activist for the right to education. Based in Birmingham, she co-founded the Malala Fund, a non-profit organisation, with Shiza Shahid. In 2013, she co-authored I Am Malala, an international best seller. In 2013, she received the Sakharov Prize, and in 2014, she was the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Kailash Satyarthi of India. Aged 17 at the time, she was the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. In 2015, she was the subject of the Oscar-shortlisted documentary He Named Me Malala. The 2013, 2014 and 2015 issues of Time magazine featured her as one of the most influential people globally. In 2017 she was awarded honorary Canadian citizenship and became the youngest person to address the House of Commons of Canada.

Yousafzai completed her secondary school education at Edgbaston High School, Birmingham in England from 2013 to 2017. From there she won a place at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and undertook three years of study for a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), graduating in 2020.^[She returned in 2023 to become the youngest ever Honorary Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford.

Muslim women cannot sit at the but eat in the kitchen alone.

They can't drive.