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Hussain Aga Khan was born on 10 April 1974, in Geneva, Switzerland. He received his secondary education at Deerfield Academy, Massachusetts, and graduated from Williams College, Massachusetts, with a dual degree in theatre and French literature. In 2004, he received a Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. At Columbia, Hussain’s main area of study was Economic and Political Development with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa.

Hussain has been an avid tropical fish hobbyist since the age of five and a reptile and amphibian enthusiast since he was 14. At 14, he started scuba diving and developed a keen interest in conservation. He started travelling to the tropics frequently after secondary school, and began taking photographs of fauna and flora on a trip to the Brazilian Amazon in 1996.

He is chair of the board of the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat, focusing mainly on disaster risk reduction and emergency management in Central Asia, Pakistan and India. He also serves on the board of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), and sits on the AKDN Committee, the oversight body of the Aga Khan Development Network. Involvement with the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) has centered on the management of the Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan Fund for the Environment. More recently, Hussain joined his brother, Prince Rahim, and key directors of AKDN agencies as a member of the Environment and Climate Change Committee (ECC) in order to work on environmental issues and the impact of climate change in some of AKDN’s priority countries.

An assembly of his rainforest photographs from seven countries, entitled Rainforests and including statistics related to deforestation and biodiversity, appeared in three exhibits in the US in 2004. His work has also been exhibited in Paris at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (2007), at the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco for the Blue Ocean Film Festival and for the 10-year anniversary of Prince Albert’s foundation (2015 and 2016 respectively), and at the IUCN ocean conference in Hawaii in 2016. His photography was featured at the Sustainable Blue Economy Conference in Nairobi (2018), and most recently at the National Museum of Natural History and Science in Lisbon (2019).