Goli Taraghi’s father Lotfollah Taraghi was a member of parliament, publisher and journalist, and her mother was from a widely cultured family. Born and raised in Tehran, she attended Drake University in the United States, gaining an undergraduate degree in philosophy. Returning to Iran, she obtained a master’s degree from Tehran University in 1967 and worked throughout the 1960s as a specialist in international relations for the Plan Organization. In the 1970s she taught courses in philosophy, mythology and symbolism at Tehran University. After the Iranian Revolution the universities were temporarily closed in 1980. Taraghi divorced her husband Hazhir Daryush and moved with her two children to become an ex-patriate in Paris, though she visited Iran throughout the 1980s.
