Born in Mbabane, Swaziland (present-day Eswatini) in 1969 to South African parents, Dumezweni lived in Botswana, Kenya and Uganda.

[25] She starred in Linda at London's Royal Court Theatre in November 2015, stepping into the role vacated by Kim Cattrall with a few days' notice before press night.

Awarding the production five stars, the Daily Telegraph's chief theatre critic Dominic Cavendish wrote: "If they can bottle and mass-produce whatever it is that Noma Dumezweni has got then, please, I want to order a life-time's supply.

[36] Dumezweni appeared on numerous television shows, and in 2018, she starred in Black Earth Rising, the Hugo Blick drama about the prosecution of war criminals.

[39] She plays Haley Fitzgerald, a powerhouse attorney hired by a wealthy New York psychotherapist (Kidman) to represent her husband (Grant), a pediatric cancer doctor who has been charged with the brutal killing of his mistress.

She played Dionne Davis in Peter Hedges' large ensemble drama The Same Storm and critic Stephen Farber wrote, her "powerhouse performance strikes the right mournful but modestly hopeful note as we exit the theater.

[43][44] In radio, she has appeared in Jambula Tree, Seven Wonders of the Divided World, From Fact to Fiction,[50] From Freedom to the Future, Handprint,[51] Jane's Story,[52] Sagila, Shylock,[53] The Farming of Bones,[54] The No.

[58] She voiced various roles in the BBC Radio 4 dramatic recordings of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness.

She voiced the young adult adventure series Steeplejack by A. J. Hartley that is set in an imaginary world loosely resembling Victorian South Africa.