Amal Al Khedairy was born in Damascus, Syria, 1928, to a Syrian mother and well-known Iraqi father, Yasseen Al Khedairy, whose family has deep roots in Iraq since the 15th century. Her father's family are connected to the Shammar tribe who originated from Najd in the Arabian Peninsula. They later settled in the old quarter of Baghdad, close to the Gailani Mosque in the Bab Al Sheikh district, where her father would build a home later to become Amal's Al Beit Al Iraqi in 1988; which was destroyed in a bombing by the American forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq on April 4, 2003.