Farzana Islam was born in Dhaka in 1958. Her ancestral home is in Bhedarganj, Shariatpur district. Farzana Islam completed her graduation and post-graduation from the Department of Sociology, Dhaka University in 1980. In 1982, she started teaching by joining the Department of Sociology, University of Chittagong. She joined the Department of Anthropology, Jahangirnagar University in 1982. In 2001 she received her PhD from the University of Sussex. She served as chairman of the Department of Anthropology.
In 2 March, 2014 she was appointed as vice-chancellor of Jahangirnagar University. She is the country's first woman vice-chancellor among all the public universities.