Kiara Advani is the daughter of Jagdeep Advani, a businessman, and Genevieve Jaffrey, a teacher. She has a younger brother, Mishaal. She is the step-great-granddaughter of actor Ashok Kumar and great-granddaughter of Saeed Jaffrey. Actress Juhi Chawla and model Shaheen Jaffrey are her aunts.

Kiara Advani made her acting debut with the Hindi comedy drama Fugly (2014). She changed her name to Kiara to avoid confusion with Alia Bhatt who was already a popular actress in Hindi cinema. In 2016, she played the role of Mahendra Singh Dhoni's wife Sakshi in the biographical sports film MS Dhoni: The Untold Story.

She then starred in Abbas-Mustan’s flop Hindi romantic thriller film Machine (2017). In 2018, she starred in Koratala Siva’s Telugu political action drama film Bharat Ane Nenu opposite Mahesh Babu. In the same year, she starred in Karan Johar’s segment of the Netflix movie Lust Stories and gave a critically acclaimed performance.

In 2019, she will be seen opposite Shahid Kapoor in the film Kabir Singh, a remake of the Telugu movie Arjun Reddy, and Dharma Productions’ movie Good News.