Born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, Hepworth studied at Leeds School of Art, then from 1921 at the Royal College of Art. She married the sculptor John Skeaping in 1924, but the marriage was dissolved in 1933. While living in Rome she learned the traditional Italian technique of marble-carving, and in the early 1930s her interest in abstract sculpture developed, encouraged by several events. She had met the painter Ben Nicholson in 1931 and married him shortly afterwards. With him she visited the studios of Brancusi, Braque, Picasso and Gabo.

In the 1930s Hepworth became a member of several forward-looking groups such as the 7 & 5 Society and Unit One. In 1933 she joined the group Abstraction-Creation, which gave a vital impetus to her desire to carve pure geometrical forms. Her early carvings were inspired by the human figure but by 1934 her sculpture had moved on to abstracts, inspired by nature.

In 1939 she moved to St Ives where she became an influential member of the artistic community, including being a founder-member of the Penwith Society. In 1949 her first one-man show of drawings in New York extended her growing reputation. Two works were commissioned for the Festival of Britain in 1951, and throughout the 1950s Hepworth consolidated her position as Britain's premier female sculptor, being given several retrospective exhibitions and having work purchased by major international galleries. She became Dame Barbara Hepworth in 1965. She died in a fire in her studio in St Ives, where a Barbara Hepworth Museum was opened in 1976.