Manurewa has a high proportion of non-European ethnicities, making it one of the most multi-cultural suburbs in New Zealand.

The name Manurewa is a variant of the Māori word for "kite", manu aute, used by in local Waiohua dialect.

Tamapahore left the area in search of his valuable kite, eventually finding it at Whenuakite on the Coromandel Peninsula.

[5][6] Manurewa is located in South Auckland, inland from the south-eastern Manukau Harbour, north of the Pahurehure Inlet.

[5] Over 8,000 hectares of stonefield gardens were tended by Tāmaki Māori peoples on the lower slopes of the volcanoes,[11][12] where crops such as kūmara and bracken fern root were grown.

[13] The Manurewa area was settled by Ngā Riki, who were one of the three Tāmaki Māori groups who joined together to form the Waiohua in the 17th and 18th-centuries.

After her death, he married Kohe, a high ranking woman from Ngāti Pāoa, a union that was widely disapproved by the hapū.

This dissent eventually led to a division in the family, with the children of Takawai settling at Matukutūruru, and Huarangi moving with Kohe to Matukutūreia.

[19] In January 1836 missionary William Thomas Fairburn brokered a land sale between Tāmaki Māori chiefs, Pōtatau Te Wherowhero and Turia of Ngāti Te Rau, covering the majority of modern-day South Auckland between Ōtāhuhu and Papakura.

[20] 10,000 acres of the Fairburn purchase was given to James Reddy Clendon in return for land at Russell where the new capital of New Zealand was established.

[21] Clendon never lived or visited the area,[22] but sold 2,000 acres to the Martin brothers, who subdivided the land in the mid-1900s.

[25] In the early 1860s, Great South Road was used as a military supply route between Auckland and the frontier of the Invasion of the Waikato.

The main stop on the Great South Road for coach services was the Raglan Hotel at Woodside (modern-day Wiri).

[23] The station led to growth in the area; 81 people lived in Manurewa by 1879, and a post office opened in 1884.

[29] In 1939, a fire destroyed the Manurewa Picture Theatre, and the adjoining shops and boarding house.

[30] During World War II, parts of Manurewa were used as military camps for United States Army soldiers bound for the Pacific.

The mall was initially very successful, but struggled from October 1976 onwards after the opening of the Manukau Shopping Centre.

[33] By the 2010s, Manurewa had developed a significant Pasifika population, and had the highest proportion of Māori residents in the city.

They were originally based at Jellicoe Park in Manurewa and had a club room affectionately known as the "Old Black Shed".

The first local government in the area was the Manurewa Highway District, which formed in 1867 to administer road upkeep.

The residents of Manurewa elect a local board, and two councillors from the Manurewa-Papakura ward to sit on the Auckland Council.