The university enrolls approximately 18,000 students and is one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in West Africa.

[1] Financing was provided by the New York Colonization Society and the Trustees of Donations for Education in Liberia, both United States organizations.

[1] Besides American financing, colleges and individuals from the United States donated books and even the bricks and lumber used to construct the school's building.

[1] Part of the impetus to start the school was a concern that some Liberians were already leaving the nation to study in Great Britain, which American backers thought might lead to a move away from the republican form of government.

[1] Under the leadership of Edward Wilmot Blyden, school president from 1881 to 1884, women were allowed to enroll in the preparatory department.

[1] During the 1800s, UL and the country suffered from class and caste conflicts, which led to the temporary closure of Liberia College on several occasions in the 1890s.

[6] In 1951, president J. Max Bond, Sr. and dean Anna E. Cooper helped to convert the college into the University of Liberia.

[7] Also in 1951, the Law School was established and named after former Liberia Supreme Court Chief Justice Louis Arthur Grimes.

[12] When UL re-opened in 1997, enrollment totaled 6,000 students,[12] though the civil war had damaged university facilities and led many faculty to leave the country.

[17] China funded a US$21.5 million expansion at the Fendall Campus that began in April 2008, which added more than five buildings.

[18] In March 2009, construction began at that campus of the new Angie Brooks International Center for Women's Research, Peace and Security, named in honor of Angie Brooks, who was the first African female president of the United Nations General Assembly as well as the first female associate justice of the Supreme Court of Liberia.

[22] The university is the oldest degree-granting school in West Africa,[10] and is accredited by Liberia's Commission on Higher Education.

[2][29] The Confucius Institute teaches the Chinese language and culture and it is also in cooperation with the Changsha University of Science and Technology.

[1] Candidates for the 2005 Presidential Election included UL alums Nathaniel Barnes, Varney Sherman, Togba-Nah Tipoteh, and Joseph Woah-Tee.

Garlawolu, Chief Justice Johnnie Lewis, politician Charles Brumskine, Foreign Minister Olubanke King Akerele, and former United States Ambassador to Liberia and founder of the Maryland Industrial and Agricultural Institute for Colored Youths, Ernest Lyon among others.