Dr. Ir. Ma’rifatin Zahrah, M.Si., was born in Semarang, Central Java, on May 5, 1964. She is the second of six siblings, born to Mirza Muhammad Muhdi and Siti Fadhlun. She pursued her undergraduate studies at the Department of Forestry, Faculty of Agriculture, Hasanuddin University, Makassar, from 1983 to 1988, with a focus on wildlife conservation. In 1998, she continued her studies at the master's level at the Graduate School of IPB (Bogor Agricultural University), maintaining her consistency in the field of Forestry Science, and completed her degree in 2002.

Later, she pursued her Doctoral Program from 2009 to 2014 at the Graduate School of Universitas Sumatera Utara, choosing a program still related to forestry, namely the Natural Resources and Environmental Management (PSL) program. She remained dedicated to the wildlife conservation/ecology field, and her dissertation was titled: "Habitat Suitability Analysis for the Conservation of Sumatran Elephants (Elephas maximus sumatranus) by Constructing a Habitat Index."

Dr. Ma’rifatin Zahrah began her career as a civil servant lecturer at the Regional Higher Education Coordinating Board (Kopertis Wilayah I) and was stationed at the Pante Kulu Forestry College in Banda Aceh from 1994 to 2017. In 2003, she started teaching at the USU Undergraduate Program in Forestry, albeit initially as an adjunct lecturer. She became a permanent lecturer at the USU Faculty of Forestry in 2018 until now, specializing in Forest Resource Conservation (KSH).