Lara Croft was born in Surrey to Richard and Amelia Croft and attended the Abbingdon Girls' School from three to six years old where she excelled.

Her parents both died while she was young. When she was nine, a plane that she and her mother were on crashed in the Himalayas, where her mother disappeared. She hiked for ten days to Kathmandu before turning in to the local bar. For the next six years, she traveled around with her father, participating in his archaeological digs and receiving education from tutors. When she was fifteen, her father was lost in Cambodia. Without a body to prove he was dead, Lara was forced into a legal battle to inherit the estate and the title of countess. She won, but at the cost of bitter resentment by the rest of her family.

While turning up some very important artifacts, Lara is not an archaeologist in the classical sense. Some have described her as nothing more than a grave robber, stealing artifacts and contaminating dig sites.

Croft is a very private person. She does not do interviews or comment on public perception of her. Instead, she issues statements through family solicitors Hardgraves and Moore.