Eve Mahlab was born in Vienna, Austria, on 30 May 1937, the only child of Robert Dickstein (later Anglicized to Dickins) and Gertrud (Trudy).
The family lost their home and business and lived in hiding after the release of Eve's father and Arthur Albers from a detention centre.
Robert Dickins purchased a controlling interest in the soft drink manufacturing company, Ecks, while Trudy worked as a real estate agent.
[3] Mahlab was educated at Korowa Anglican Girls School, Methodist Ladies College, and the University of Melbourne, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws in March 1958.
[4] Admitted as a barrister and solicitor in 1959, Mahlab served her articles year in the family law practice of Norman Landau.
Between 1961 and 1964 Mahlab had three children, Karen, Bobbi and Ken, and continued to work from home, as a family law solicitor.
She found it extremely difficult to work effectively while caring for young children and met other women facing the same dilemma.
In 1973, during the Victorian state election campaign, Mahlab, with other WEL members, designed a WEL forum at Dallas Brooks Hall, chaired by Mahlab, where the leaders of the major parties, including Rupert Hamer and Clyde Holding, addressed an audience of two thousand women and a few men, and responded to questions 'on childcare, abortion, equal pay and contraception.
[14] In December 1979, Mahlab played a central role in organizing the defeat of right-wing groups at elections for Victorian delegates to the National Women's Advisory Council Conference in the lead-up to the Second United Nations World Conference on Women, to be held in Copenhagen in July 1980.
In 1988 Mahlab was honoured by appointment as an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for service to business, to government and the community, particularly to women.
She and her husband provided the initial funding for the Institute's Eve Mahlab Blue Sky Awards for Research, established in 2020.
[26] In 1995, as a board member of Westpac, she attended the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women, held in Beijing.
To encourage the gender-lens approach to giving, in 2020 Australians Investing in Women established the Eve Mahlab AO Gender-wise Philanthropy Award.