He was born in Damascus, where his father was the Consul-General of Iran, and was raised in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. He completed a Ph.D. in International Law and Economics at the Sorbonne, Paris, France in 1948.

Hoveyda, who died after a long fight against cancer, is survived by his wife Gisela and their two daughters Mandana and Roxana.

A participant in the final drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he worked in UNESCO from 1951 to 1966. In the late 1960s, he returned to Iran and worked in the Iranian Foreign Ministry as the Under-Secretary for International and Economic Affairs. From 1971 to 1979 he represented Iran at the United Nations.

Apart from politics, he was active in the field of cinema and was a member of the editorial board of the celebrated film magazine Cahiers du cinéma.

His brother, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, a former prime minister of Iran under the Shah, was executed after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Having been forced out of the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Fereydoun Hoveyda became a senior fellow and member of the Executive Committee of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP).

He was also a well-known author of 18 novels and non-fiction books in French, English, and German.