Considered one of the best actors of the current generation for her wide-ranging and committed performances in movies and television shows, Florence Pugh was born on 3 January 1996 in Oxford, England, to dance-teacher Deborah and restaurateur Clinton Pugh. Florence has three siblings, namely Toby Sebastian, best known for playing the role of Prince Trystane Martell in the much acclaimed American fantasy drama television series Games of Thrones, actress and writer Arabella Gibbins, and actress Rafaela Pugh, known for Born of War (2014). Unfortunately, Florence frequently suffered from tracheomalacia during her childhood, causing acute breathing problems, for which she was hospitalised several times. With the hope that warmer weather would improve her health, the family moved from Oxford to Manilva in Spain, when Florence was only three, and stayed there for three years, before returning to England, as the change did not help to improve her condition. Interestingly, her childhood suffering from the disease left a mark on her life in the form of a husky voice that eventually became one of her distinguished on-screen speciality during her acting career.

Florence Pugh received her early education at Wychwood School in Oxford from 2007 to 2009, and then attended St Edward's School, an independent co-educational boarding school in Oxford, and also briefly attended Cokethorpe School in Witney during the early 2000s. However, she always felt that school was not the right place for her and was more passionate about performing from a young age. However, she appeared in school plays as a child, before making her professional acting debut while still studying in the sixth form, playing the role of Abbie Mortimer, a precocious teenager, in the mystery film The Falling (2014), for which she was acclaimed by the press as remarkable and striking. For her performance in the film, Florence was nominated for Best British Newcomer at the London Film Festival, as well as a nomination for Young British / Irish Performer of the Year by the London Critics Circle.

However, Florence did not have to be late to catch public attention and her skyward trajectory to superstardom began soon, as she got the opportunity to play the lead role of Katherine, an unhappy young woman, married to an abusive man twice her age and her escape from the situation through an affair with a local workingman, leading to a series of murders, in Lady Macbeth (2016), a dark 19th-century period drama. She drew rave reviews for her portrayal of the character's complex, under-the-skin transformation, and also earned the British Independent for Best Actress. In addition to that, her success in the film led her to the opportunity of portraying the role of Cordelia, the second wife of the mediaeval Scottish King Robert the Bruce, opposite Anthony Hopkins, in Richard Eyre’s television film King Lear (2018), and also the lead role of Elizabeth de Burgh, the second wife of the mediaeval Scottish King Robert the Bruce, in the Netflix movie Outlaw King (2018), which is one of her earliest high-profile roles, showcasing her incredible ability to perform in period dramas. The same year, Florence also starred in the much acclaimed BBC television miniseries The Little Drummer Girl (2018), based on a novel by John le Carré, best known for his espionage novels, and directed by the famous South Korean thriller film director, Park Chan-wook.

Florence Pugh began the next year with a comedic turn, playing the role of Saraya Knight in Fighting with My Family (2019), a lighthearted film about a real-world family of English professional wrestlers, for which she was depicted as completely convincing as the wrestler, by Geoffrey Macnab of the British online newspaper The Independent, and also won London Critic Circle Award for British-Irish Actress of the year. However, the same year, she also appeared in the psychological horror film Midsommar (2019), portraying the role of Dani Ardor, a recently traumatised graduate student who joins her boyfriend and other anthropology researchers on a visit to rural Sweden to observe a cult festival that occurs every 90 years, encountering horrible folk traditions, which include extremely gruesome sacrificials taking place during the polar daylight of the summer solstice near the Arctic Circle. The film was a massive box-office hit, while Florence Pugh was profusely praised for her performance in the role of desolate Dani, depicted as amazingly vivid.

In her final film release of the year, Pugh starred in Little Women (2019), a period drama, based on a novel by Louisa May Alcott of the same name, directed by Greta Celeste Gerwigm, appearing as Any March, a fickle artist, from age 11 into adulthood. Although a lot of people were confused when Florence Pugh, a fully grown woman, was cast as Amy, the youngest March daughter, and admittedly she looked a little silly alongside the actual children who play her classmates, she wonderfully managed the tricky contradictions of the character, much to the delight of the critics. The film received critical acclaim, grossed $209 million, and received six Academy Award nominations, while Florence earned her first Academy Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role, as well as a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

In 2021, Florence Pugh portrayed the role of Yelena Belova, the adopted sister of Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, a fugitive played by Scarlett Johansson, as well as an accomplished assassin in her own right, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Black Widow (2021), and reprised the role in the later series Hawkeye (2021), which garnered positive reviews, highlighting Pugh’s performance. The next year, she appeared as Alice in Olivia Wilde’s science fiction drama film Don’t Worry Darling (2022), starring with pop star Harry Styles, with whom she allegedly clashed while filming. Nevertheless, the film was premiered at the 79th Venice International Film Festival, where critics deemed Pugh's performance superior to the film. In 2023, she appeared in two important films, which include a psychological drama film, A Good Person (2023), written and directed by Florence Pugh’s then-boyfriend Zach Braff, playing the role of Allison, who spent a year in a drug-fueled fog, struggling to overcome the guilt she feels over the car crash that took the lives of her fiancé’s brother and his wife. For the specific purpose of the role, Florence cut off her hair, instead of opting for a wig, wrote and sang two songs for the soundtrack of the film, and although the film received mixed reviews from critics for its sentimentality, Florence Pugh earned praise for her emotionally honest performance.

In the same year, Florence Pugh also appeared in Christopher Nolan’s multi-starrer biographical epic Oppenheimer (2023), retelling of the development of the atomic bomb, in which she portrayed psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, former lover of the famous physicist Robert Oppenheimer, whose attachment to the Communist Party of the USA caused trouble for the scientist, while he was working for the US government during the Red Scar, the periods of intense fear of communism and radical leftist ideologies in the history of the USA. In her brief appearance, Pugh provided a mesmerising screen presence in the film, which included explosive sex scenes. The film was a blockbuster, proved to be Pugh's highest-grossing release, and won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Florence continued her spree of box-office hits with another multi-starrer science-fiction adventure film, Dune: Part Two (2024), which garnered positive reviews and grossed over $715 million worldwide, and received five nominations for Academy Award, winning two. In the same year, she starred with Andrew Garfield in We Live in Time (2024), a romantic drama, in which she appeared as Almut, a chef diagnosed with terminal cancer. For the sake of reality, Pugh shaved her head instead of using a wig, and her performance in the character was considered by the Los Angeles Times to be the prime asset of the production. Recently, she reprised the role of Yelena Belova in Thunderbokts* (2025), about a group of antiheroes, in which she did her stunt scene of jumping from the top of Merdeka 118, a 118-storey skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur, without using a stunt double. The film and Pugh's performance in the film, both received positive reviews from critics.

Florence Pugh is known for her fashion sense, and her fashion choices are depicted as bold, daring and unique, by some fashion magazines. In 2022, at a Valentino show, she appeared in a sheer pink gown, which led to some backlash as it showed her nipples. In her personal life, she was in a relationship with American actor and filmmaker Zach Braff, whom she met while working together on the short film In the Time It Takes to Get There (2019), and lived together in Los Angeles till 2022. It was reported that she dated photographer Charlie Gooch in 2023.