Her father, Ahmed Seif, who died in 2014, was a human rights attorney and opposition leader who spent five years in prison during the Mubarak regime.

Her mother is "known on the streets as brash and courageous, and has on numerous occasions faced down baton-wielding policemen with nothing but her scolding, scathing, booming voice and steely eyes".

[2] Seif's brother Alaa Abd El-Fattah co-created the Egyptian blog aggregator Manalaa and in 2005 began to document abuses by the Mubarak regime.

Alaa was arrested at a demonstration in 2006 and imprisoned for 45 days, during which Mona and his wife Manal helped organize an online campaign to free him.

[12] She has been critical of the actions of Egypt's interim ruling body the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) saying, of the release of protesters without full exoneration: “The fact that they have suspended sentences does not give them the pride they deserve as revolutionaries who did nothing wrong.

She speculates that this may be an attempt to stop the regular marches and may also be due to the pressure applied by international human right groups.

[2] In 2012, she was a finalist for the Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk, which ultimately went to Syrian blogger Razan Ghazzawi.