She was the second child of the leading Ottoman civil servant, renowned historian and bureaucrat Ahmed Cevdet Pasha (1822–1895)[4] and his wife Adviye Rabia Hanım.

[3][6] Due to her father's position as wali (English: province governor) to Egypt and later to Greece, she spent three years from 1866 to 1868 in Aleppo and six months in 1875 in Janina.

[5][7] In 1879, when she was seventeen years old, her father arranged her marriage to captain-major (Ottoman Turkish: Kolağası) Mehmet Faik Bey, an aide-de-camp of Sultan Abdul Hamid II and a nephew of Gazi Osman Pasha, the hero of the Siege of Plevna (1877).

[5] She debuted in literature in 1889 with the translation of Georges Ohnet's novel Volonté from French into Turkish under the title Meram with her husband's permission, ten years after her marriage.

[5] Renowned writer Ahmet Mithat was so impressed by her that he declared her as his honorary daughter in the newspaper Tercüman-ı Hakikat ("The Interpreter of Truth").

[9] Fatma Aliye published her first novel Muhazarat ("Useful Information") in 1892 under her real name, in which she tried to disprove the belief that a woman can not forget her first love.

[8][9] The renowned novelist Reşat Nuri Güntekin refers to Udi as one of the most important works which attracted his interest in literature.

[11] In 1893, her prominence grew up after the publication of Ahmet Mithat's book Bir Muharrire-i Osmaniye'nin Neşeti ("Birth of An Ottoman Female Writer") composed of Fatma Aliye's letters.

A criticism of her, published in a French newspaper, about a book titled "Women of East and West" by Frenchman Émile Julliard attracted much attention in Paris.

[13] Beside her literary works, she wrote for thirteen years between 1895 and 1908 columns in the magazine Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete ("Ladies' Own Gazette")[14] about women's rights without giving up her conservative views.

Her sister Emine Semiye Önasya (1864–1944), one of the first Turkish feminists,[3] was also among the intellectual women as editorial staff of the twice a week issued magazine.

After the Greco-Turkish War, she founded in 1897 a charitable organization "Nisvan-ı Osmaniye İmdat Cemiyeti" (Ottoman Women's Association for Aid) to support families of soldiers.