Mary Doria Russell was born in the suburbs of Chicago. Her parents were both in the military: her father was a Marine Corps drill instructor, and her mother was a Navy nurse. She graduated from Glenbard East High School and later she earned a Ph.D in biological anthropology at the University of Michigan. She was raised as a Catholic but left the church at age fifteen, and her struggles to figure out how much of that culture to pass on to her children fueled the prominence of religion in her work.

Russell currently lives in Lyndhurst, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, with her husband, Don. They have a son, Dan