Born into a prominent Arab American family, Halaby was raised in an atmosphere of affluence. She attended the elite National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., transferring to the exclusive Chapin School in New York City in 1965 and to the Concord Academy in Boston in 1967. In 1969 she matriculated with the first coeducational freshman class at Princeton University, where she received a bachelor's degree in architecture and urban planning in 1975. After graduation, Halaby worked in urban design in Philadelphia, in Sydney, Australia, and in Tehrān. She first went to Jordan while working for Arab Air Services, a company partly owned by her father, and in 1977 she became director of facilities design and architecture for Alia, the Royal Jordanian Airline. It was during that time that she met the Jordanian monarch, and the two wed soon thereafter. Halaby took Jordanian citizenship, embraced the Islamic faith, and adopted an Arabic name.

Queen Noor undertook numerous philanthropic duties at home and abroad, many of which were concerned with children. Among the agencies she established were the Royal Endowment for Culture and Education (1979), the National Music Conservatory (1985), and the Jubilee School for gifted students (1993). In 1980 the queen convened the first annual Arab Children's Congress, and from 1995 she was chair of the National Task Force for Children. In 1985 the Noor al-Ḥussein Foundation was established to consolidate the queen's various initiatives, and, when the king died in 1999, she was entrusted with the chair of the King Ḥussein Foundation, the purpose of which is also to promote humanitarian interests. In the late 1990s, she became involved in the international movement to ban antipersonnel land mines (mine), particularly with two organizations, the Landmine Survivors Network and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. (See also Sidebar: The Hidden Dangers of Land Mines.)