Shamim Fatima Jafari was born in Agra (1930) and died there in 2006. She started writing poetry at an early age. Her father and mother were both poets. Maikash Akbarabadi was her  Uncle and father-in-law. Shamim's father Syed Ahmad Ali Shah Jafri was a judge, magistrate in Jaipur where she studied at the St. Angeles Convent School and did her private bachelor's degree from  Aligarh Muslim University. Apart from Urdu, her grip on Persian and English was also strong. She translated Ghazals of famous Persian poets Mirza Qateel and Hafiz Shirazi and a famous poem of Sarojini Naidu, into Urdu. Passing on the family traditions, she observed purdah and neither published her kalam in any magazine nor compiled any poetry collection. She has written Ghazals, poems, qasidas, Naats, manqabats and sehras but most of her kalam has been lost. Whatever is left, is saved by her younger sister Naeema Jafri Pasha, a well-known fiction writer. Her ghazals have the essence of classical Urdu poetry.