Farouk Hosny was born in Alexandria in 1942. He studied for five years at the city's Academy of Fine Arts, from which he graduated in 1964. He then worked as the Director of El- Anfoushy Culture Palace, during which time he painted landscapes and seascapes depicting Alexandria. In the late 1960s, while he was on a trip to France, Hosny began painting abstractions.

From 1971 to 1978 he lived in Paris, where he served as Director of the Egyptian Culture Center. During that period, in 1971, Hosny was awarded the National Prize of the Cagnes-sur-Mer Festival in Southern France.

In 1979, after a short stay in Cairo, Hosny moved to Rome as Vice Director and then Director of the Egyptian Academy in Rome. He continued to paint and received positive attention from Italian cities when his work was shown on several occasions in private and public spaces.

In 1987 he returned to Cairo when he was appointed to the position of Minister of Culture.

Hosny has exhibited widely in Europe and in the Middle East, including the Two Worlds Festival in Spoleto in 1985, the Citadel in Naples 1986, the National Museum in Bahrain in 1992, the UNESCO Organization in Paris for the fiftieth anniversary of UNESCO in 1995, Rowshan Art Hall in Jeddah in 1995, Le CaRROUSEL Du Louvre in Paris in 1997-98.

In 1998, his work was shown at the Palais Harach Museum in Vienna, the Sursouk Museum in Beirut, Lebanon, the arts Museum of Sharge in the United Arab Emirates, the Arts National Museum in Kuwait City, and the Meguro Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.

In 1994 Hosny received an Honorary Doctorate from Soka University in Japan. In 1998 the artist was selected as one of the seventy pioneer artists worldwide for a special exhibition in Paris organized by the French art magazine Beaux-Arts.

In May 1999 he was elected to the membership of the European Academy of Science and Art in Vienna.

Hosny currently resides in Cairo as Minister of Culture of the Arab Republic of Egypt.