Amirah Inglis was born in Brussels of Polish Jewish parents and was at high school during the war. She graduated from the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University. From 1948 to 1950 she worked on the communist weekly The Guardian. She has worked as a librarian and research assistant and as a teacher of high school students, university students, public servants and gardeners in Australia and Papua New Guinea. She has been a member of the Australian Society of Authors. As well as autobiographical and biographical works, Inglis has also published her MA thesis Not a White Woman Safe : Sexual Anxiety and Politics in Port Moresby, 1920-1934 ( 1974 and re-published as The White Women's Protection Ordinance : Sexual Anxiety and Politics in Papua, 1975).
Inglis's first husband was historian Ian Turner. In 1965 she married Ken Inglis who later became Professor of History at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby.
