Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi was born in 1956 or 1959 in the Marran area, the ancestral home of the Houthi tribe, which is administratively part of modern Haydan District of Saada Governorate.
[1] According to a disciple, Hussein al-Houthi lived part of his life with his family, including his father, Badreddin and his younger brother, Abdul-Malik,[1] in Qom, Iran.
[3] Al-Houthi founded the Believing Youth movement (Arabic: شباب المؤمنین) in 1990 or 1992 to teach young persons about Zaidi Islam and its history to revive Zaidism in Saada Governorate.
[8][11] On 5 June 2013, tens of thousands of Yemeni Shias attended the reburial of the remains of al-Houthi in Sa'dah, where armed rebels were deployed in large numbers.
The previous government of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had stepped down in 2012 after the Yemeni Revolution, originally buried al-Houthi in 2004 at the Sana'a central prison to prevent his grave from becoming a shrine for the Zaidis.