Faruqi was born in Lahore, Pakistan. Her father, a civil engineer, was a professor at the University of Engineering and Technology (UET) in Lahore and she grew up on the UET campus. She graduated from UET with a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) degree in 1988, and subsequently worked as a structural engineer. Her older brothers, younger sister, husband, and father-in-law are also civil engineers. Faruqi and her husband Omar moved to Sydney in 1992, where she began attending the University of New South Wales (UNSW); her father had previously studied there under the Colombo Plan in the 1950s.Greens' Mehreen Faruqi an engineer with a vision of diversity, The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 2014. Retrieved 25 November 2017. She completed a Master of Engineering Science degree in 1994, and later received a doctorate in environmental engineering in 2000, with her doctoral thesis titled "Intensification of anaerobic lagoons for abattoir wastewater treatment and biogas recovery". Faruqi moved to Port Macquarie in 2001, but moved back to Sydney in 2006. She and her husband have two children together, including Osman Faruqi, a political journalist.
