Rahimpour was born on 9 January 1983 in Tehran, Iran. She was raised in Tehran. Rahimpour went to university in Iran and lived there for the first 25 years of her life. She studied English-Persian Translation at Azad University and accounting at Alzahra University. She moved to London in 2008 to work for the BBC Persian TV. She is married and has two children.

In January 2016, despite being British, Rahimpour was banned from travelling to the United States because of her Iranian nationality.

Rana Rahimpour (Persian: رعنا رحیم پور, born 9 January 1983 ) is a British-Iranian journalist who works for the BBC World Service. Rahimpour is BBC Persian TV’s Senior Presenter. She has anchored and covered many major Iranian and international stories for the network, including Iran’s nuclear programme, Iran’s Presidential elections 2009 and its aftermath both for BBC Persian television and BBC World Service and the Iranian Presidential election of 2013. As a bilingual reporter, Rahimpour covers Iranian politics on multiple BBC platforms, including the flagship news programme Newsnight. Since the beginning of 2018, Rahimpour has appeared on News At Ten. [1] Rahimpour’s Toothpaste piece for BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondents was on the program’s 2018 highlights. [2] She interviewed BBC’s John Simpson for the 40th anniversary of Iranian Revolution’s of 1979. [3]

She is one of the outspoken advocates of free press and has been campaigning against the harassment of BBC Persian journalists and their family members in Iran. [4] In 2018, she addressed the United Nation’s Human Rights Council in Geneva, calling for an end to the intimidation of journalists by the Iranian authorities. [5][6]