Shortly after her birth in London, her father, an Iranian airline executive, moved the family to Tehran, where the Amanpours led a privileged life. At age 11 she was sent back to England where she attended first the Holy Cross Convent School in Buckinghamshire and then the New Hall School, an exclusive Roman Catholic girls' school. Her family had to leave Iran after the Islamic revolution of 1979. Christiane moved to the United States to study journalism at the University of Rhode Island. After graduation she worked for NBC affiliate WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island, and in 1983 she was hired by CNN. In 1989 she was posted to Frankfurt, West Germany, and reported on the democratic revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe at the time. But it was her coverage of the Gulf War that followed Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990 that made her famous. Thereafter she reported from the Bosnian war and many other conflict zones. Although contracted with CNN, she also occasionally appears on CBS's 60 Minutes.
She speaks English and Persian fluently.
In 1998 she married James Rubin, who at the time was spokesman for the US State Department. A son, Darius, was born in 2002.