Sooni Taraporevala was born in 1957 and raised in Bombay, India. She graduated from Queen Mary School in Bombay, and in 1975 received a scholarship to Harvard University. As an undergraduate she studied English Literature, Film and Photography and received a BA in 1980. She enrolled in the Cinema Studies Department at New York University, studied Film Theory and Criticism, received her MA in 1981 after which she returned to India to work as a freelance still photographer. Her photographs have been exhibited in India, the United States, France, and Britain.

In 1986 she wrote her first screenplay, Salaam Bombay!, for director/producer Mira Nair which earned Taraporevala the Lillian Gish Award from Women in Film. Her second screenplay, Mississippi Masala, also for Mira Nair, won the Osella award for Best Screenplay at the 1991 Venice Film Festival. Her other writing credits include the films Such a Long Journey, based on the novel by Rohinton Mistry and directed by Sturla Gunnarson, which earned Taraporevala a Genie nomination from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television; My Own Country, based on the book by Abraham Verghese and directed by Mira Nair for Showtime television which earned her a Shine nomination; and the film Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar directed by Dr. Jabbar Patel for the Government of India and the National Film Development Corporation of India.

In 2000 she published a book of her photographs PARSIS: The Zoroastrians of India. The book sold out within six months. A second edition was published by Overlook Press, NY in 2004 and is currently in print.

Her latest project, adapting Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake, for Mira Nair, is to be shot in March 2005 for a 2006 release.

She lives in Bombay with her husband Dr. Firdaus Bativala, and their two children, Jahan and Iyanah.