First published on July 28, 1986, by veteran journalists Betty Go-Belmonte, Max Soliven and Art Borjal, it is one of several Philippine newspapers founded after the 1986 People Power Revolution.

In March 2014, the newspaper was acquired by MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., a media conglomerate subsidized by the PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund, after the company purchased a majority stake in Philstar Daily, Inc.

[4] Before its establishment, founders Betty Go-Belmonte, Max Soliven and Art Borjal were veteran journalists involved in the "Mosquito Press", a collective name for the different newspapers critical of the Marcos administration that were published after the Martial Law era from 1972 to 1981.

[1] On December 9, 1985, a few months before the 1986 People Power Revolution, Belmonte, Soliven, and Borjal, together with Eugenia Apostol, Louie Beltran, and Florangel Rosario-Braid, founded the English-language newspaper Philippine Daily Inquirer, which soon became the Marcos administration's most vocal critic.

However, after the revolution, questions about finances and a divergence of priorities caused a rift among the Inquirer's founders, which led to Belmonte, Soliven, and Borjal's founding of The Philippine Star.

The first issue of the newspaper on July 28, 1986, had eight pages, no advertisements and carried the headline, "Wear yellow and die" that featured the death of 23-year-old Stephen Salcedo, a bystander killed by a mob of Marcos loyalists during a rally at Manila's Luneta Park.

With the sudden death of Belmonte due to cancer on January 28, 1994, Soliven assumed chairmanship of the Board of Directors while retaining his position as publisher.

The following year, the newspaper introduced "Hotline 2000", which made use of SMS as a means for opinion polling, thus becoming a pioneer in televoting in the Philippine print media industry.

While Philstar Daily Inc. operates the newspaper and social media platforms as well as niche websites, the website is operated by Philstar Global Corp.[10] As early 2009, businessman and PLDT chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan had expressed his interest in acquiring a stake in The Philippine Star in a bid to dominate the multimedia industry.