Frieda Hughes is the daughter of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Her mother committed suicide in 1963.

Hughes was born in London. She moved to Perth, Western Australia in 1988, and later settled in Wooroloo, a small hamlet north of Perth, in 1991, where the Australian landscape became the basis of much of her painting. She returned to the UK to live and work when her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1997. Her father died in October 1998. Her only sibling, Nicholas Hughes, committed suicide on 16 March 2009.

She married the Hungarian artist Laszlo Lukacs in 1996. They divorced in 2010 after a year-long separation.

Frieda Hughes graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, with a BA (Hons.) in 1988.

From 2006 to 2008 Frieda Hughes wrote a weekly poetry column for The Times newspaper and in 2008 was chair judge for the Forward Prizes for poetry and a judge for the National Poetry competition.

In February 2010 she was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3.

Children's books:

• 1986: Getting Rid of Edna - published in the UK by Heinemann. Published as Getting Rid of Aunt Edna in the U.S. by Harper and Row. Published in paperback in the UK by Pan Books in 1988.
• 1989: The Meal a Mile Long - author-illustrated picture book for young children. Published by Simon and Schuster in the U.S., Australia and the UK.
• 1990: Waldorf and the Sleeping Granny - published by Simon and Schuster in the UK.
• 1992: The Thing in the Sink - published by Simon and Schuster in the UK. Reissued in 2003 by Hodder Children's Books.
• 1994: Rent-a-friend - published by Simon and Schuster in the UK.
• 1997: The Tall Story - published by Macdonald Young Books in the UK. Re-issued by Hodder Children's Books in 2003.
• 2001: Three Scary Stories - published by Harper Collins in the UK.

Poetry Collections:

• 1998: Wooroloo - published in the U.S. by Harper Flamingo. Published in 1999 in Australia by Fremantle Arts Centre Press and in the UK by Bloodaxe Books. Wooroloo received a Poetry Book Society special recommendation.
• 2001: Stonepicker - published by Bloodaxe in the UK and Fremantle Press in Australia.
• 2002: Waxworks - published by Bloodaxe in the UK, Harper Collins in the U.S. and Fremantle Press in Australia in 2003.
• 2006: Forty-Five - published by Harper Collins in the U.S.
• 2009: Stonepicker and the Book of Mirrors - published by Harper Collins in the U.S.

Frieda Hughes's poems have also been published in The New Yorker, Tatler, The Spectator, Thumbscrew, The Paris Review, First Pressings, The London Magazine, The Times, The Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph among others.