In 2013, Irish Braschi's biographical documentary I Was Born Travelling told the story of her life, focusing in particular on her imprisonment in a concentration camp in Japan during World War II and the journeys she made around the world with her partner Alberto Moravia and close friends Pier Paolo Pasolini and Maria Callas.

She is the daughter of Sicilian Princess Topazia Alliata di Salaparuta, an artist and art dealer, and of Fosco Maraini, a Florentine ethnologist and mountaineer of mixed Ticinese, English and Polish background who wrote in particular on Tibet and Japan.

They were interned in a Japanese concentration camp in Nagoya from 1943 to 1946 for refusing to recognize Mussolini's Republic of Salò, allied with the Empire of Japan.

Maraini grew up with an adventurous father and a mother who was always burdened and, in addition to this, read books in which only men would go on quests and journeys.

She states that she "became upset by the fact that no great journey could be taken by a woman..."[2] She married Lucio Pozzi, a Milanese painter, but they separated after four years.

In 1966, Maraini, Moravia and Enzo Siciliano founded the del Porcospino ("Porcupine") theatrical company which had as its mission the production of new Italian plays.

They included her own La famiglia normale, Moravia's L'intervista, Siciliano's Tazza, and works by Carlo Emilio Gadda, Goffredo Parise, J. Rodolfo Wilcock and Tornabuoni.

[4] Maraini has begun acting, recently appearing in Io sono nata viaggiando (2013) and narrating Caro Paolo (2013).

She also appeared as herself in The Many Women of Fassbinder (1997), Midnight Journal (1990), Sophia: Ieri, oggi, domani (2007), Kulturzeit (2012), and Tutte le storie di Piera (2013).

[6] Maraini's works have a general pattern to which they abide; a series of short stories and novels that reflect her "prefeminist stage" are characterized by a sense of alienation, total disorientation, and the need for self-assentation through sexuality.

[7] Maraini's "transitional stage," best characterized by her novel, A memoria, demonstrates a tone shifting from inaction to an active search for innovative expression.

[7] Dacia Maraini underwent "a process of evolution in ideology"[17] divided into two forms; one that outlines the individual's close relationships with reality and the other based on motivation to further the cause of women's rights.