Ferraro was the daughter of Italian immigrants. Her father died when she was eight years old. She attended Marymount College in Manhattan on a scholarship; she majored in English, taking a B.A. in 1956. While teaching English in public schools in Queens, she attended Fordham University Law School at night. She earned a law degree in 1960, was admitted to the New York bar in 1961, and practiced law until 1974. She married John Zaccaro in 1960.

In 1974 Ferraro accepted a position as an assistant district attorney in the Investigations Bureau in Queens. She transferred the next year to the Special Victims Bureau, which she helped to create to handle cases of domestic violence and rape. In 1978 she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's Ninth Congressional District, running as a Democrat on a platform supporting law and order, the elderly, and neighbourhood preservation. She was reelected in 1980 and 1982.

Ferraro's autobiography, Ferraro: My Story, was published in 1985. She held a fellowship at the Harvard Institute of Politics (1988) and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1992 and 1998. From 1993 to 1996 she served as a member of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. In 1996 she became cohost of CNN's political debate show Crossfire. During the presidential election of 2008, she served as a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton (Clinton, Hillary Rodham). An uproar following controversial remarks Ferraro made about the roles of sexism and race in the election led to her resignation.