Of Ngāi Tahu and English descent,[1] Sharon Murdoch was raised in a working-class family in Invercargill, which she described as "a bit like growing up in Iceland but without the epic poems".

[3][4] In 1999/2000 she did Volunteer Service Abroad in the township of Indinsane, South Africa, working with a Xhosa women’s community development group co-drawing comics on HIV/AIDS prevention and early childhood education.

Murdoch lives in Wellington and is married with a daughter, stepdaughter, two cats (la Luna and Munro), and a dog (Iris).

[9] Murdoch began cartooning full-time in her early 50s, after being encouraged by former partner Trace Hodgson, a political cartoonist for the New Zealand Listener.

[10] Her political work is published in the Sunday Star Times, where she was appointed political cartoonist in December 2014,[1] the Christchurch Press, and occasionally the Dominion Post or the Waikato Times: usually cartoons but sometimes illustrations in collaboration with others, such as the feature Growing Up Kiwi: Sophie's Story.

[14] Judges applauded her "fresh style and satirical intelligence" and described her as "gleeful and ingenious, and very funny, but she can shock us too"; one commented, "Sharon Murdoch's political cartoons satisfy the two golden rules of the art form.