Born into a prominent family of Islamic scholars, she was made to leave school in order to get married as a teenager.

El Yunusiyah was born on 26 October 1900 in Bukit Surungan, Padang Panjang, West Sumatra, Dutch East Indies.

[1][3][4] Her grandfather, Sheikh Imaduddin, was also a well-known Islamic scholar, astronomer and leader of the local branch of the Naqshbandi order.

[4] Her family arranged for her to be married to a scholar named Bahauddin Lathif in 1916, while she was still a student in Padang Panjang, and she was required to leave school.

[9] In 1922, her husband married two more wives, and el Yunusiyah obtained a divorce before returning to her education; they had not had any children during their marriage.

She consulted with local ulema, and with the support of her brother Zainuddin and her study circle, opened a school specifically for girls in November 1923.

[12] The same year, her brother Zainuddin died; despite fears that the loss of his sponsorship would mean the end of the school, el Yunusiyah continued her efforts.

[4] El Yunusiyah also started a supplemental program for older women who had not had proper educations, although it was cut short after the 1926 Padang Panjang earthquakes destroyed the Diniyah school building.

[8][16][17] The scholar Audrey Kahin calls Diniyah Putri "one of the most successful and influential of the schools for women" in pre-independence Indonesia.

[18] El Yunusiyah disdained contact with the Dutch; unlike other modernizing female figures such as Kartini, she did not have European friends and in turn did not have a high profile among them.

[24] Husein's organization was a local movement against the central government; the council enjoyed broad support in West Sumatra.

[8] In 1950 el Yunusiyah returned to Padang Panjang to supervise the Diniyah Putri school, which was once again in operation after the war.

[6] In 1956, Abd al-Rahman Taj, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Egypt, visited el Yunusiyah's school in Padang Panjang.

[27] In the 1960s, following her political career, el Yunusiyah returned to her educational activism and pushed for the founding of an Islamic university specifically for women.