Hall's parents moved the family from Raleigh, North Carolina, to a predominantly white neighborhood in Memphis, Tennessee, when she was five years old.

[1] Hall gained mainstream prominence after her play The Mountaintop, about Martin Luther King Jr.'s last night before his assassination, premiered in London in 2009 to critical acclaim.

[5] The production was directed by James Dacre and featured British actors David Harewood and Lorraine Burroughs.

[7] The Mountaintop won the 2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play, making Hall the first Black woman to achieve this accolade.

[5] In September 2011, The Mountaintop opened on Broadway starring Samuel L. Jackson as Martin Luther King Jr. and Angela Bassett as a mysterious maid.

[1] In January 2011 during the extension of the show, lead producers Jean Doumanian and Sonia Friedman announced that The Mountaintop had recouped its entire capitalization of $3.1 million.

[11] The play starred Tony Award winner Tonya Pinkins, as well as Marsha Stephanie Blake, Ron Cephas Jones, Saycon Sengbloh, Lloyd Watts, Charlie Hudson III, Nicholas Christopher, Corey Hawkins and Joaquina Kalukango.

In Our Lady of Kibeho, Hall tells the story of a real-life incident of 1981, when a group of Rwandan schoolgirls claimed to see a vision of the Virgin Mary.

"[3] Hall was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Hot Wing King, which ran Off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre in February 2020 until its run was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

[17] Hall developed her play Pussy Valley into the television drama series on Starz, renamed P-Valley, which premiered in 2020.

[20] Hall has been a book reviewer, journalist, and essayist for publications such as The Boston Globe, Essence, Newsweek and The New York Times.