Ali Akbar Moosavi-Movahedi was born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1953. He attended Alborz High School in 1968, graduated from the National University of Iran (now known as Shahid Beheshti University) with a BSc in chemistry in 1975, earned his MSc in Bioanalytical Chemistry at the Eastern Michigan University in 1979, and obtained his Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry at the University of Manchester in 1986.