Malaika Arora Khan was born in Mumbai on August 23rd, in 1973. Her father is Anil Arora, who is a Punjabi and worked in Merchant Navy. Her mother is Joyce Polycarp. She is a Malayali. She has a younger sister named Amrita Arora, who was a small time actress and best friends with Kareena Kapoor.

Malaika Arora Khan is 5'6" tall. She studied in Swami Vivekananda School previously, and then she went to Holy Cross High School.

She started out on the small screen with MTV India as a Video Jockey (VJ) and hosted shows like Style Check and Love Line. She also walked the ramp for top designers and has quite a few brand endorsements like Streax, Nescafe etc.

She has not acted in movies as such but she has done item numbers. Her first item number was for Mani Ratnam's Dil Se (1998) with Shahrukh Khan. It was on top of a moving train and it was a mega hit. It made Malaika Arora Khan a force to reckon with. Her more recent item numbers were in movies like Kaal(2005) with Shahrukh Khan again and Dabangg(2010) with Salman Khan- the "Munni Badnaam" Song.

She has also done bit roles in movies like Kaante(2002) where she played the role of Lisa, in Housefull(2010), the role of Deepika's sister Pooja and special appearances in Heyy Baby(2007) and Om Shanti Om(2007).

Malaika Arora Khan met her husband Arbaaz Khan, Salman Khan's younger brother on the shoot of the Nescafe advertisement. They got married in 1998 and have a son named Arhaan, born in 2003.