Little is known of Rashi's life, and much of what is said about him is legend rather than historical fact. Rashi´s mother was the sister of the liturgical writer, Simeon b. Isaac. His father was a scholar whom Rashi quoted in his writings. He is said to have started school at the age of five on the festival of Shavuot (Pentecost), traditionally the festival celebrating the receipt of the Torah on Mount Sinai, as well as the birth and death of King David. According to another tradition, he himself was a descendant of King David.

He was born and grew up in Troyes, the capital city of the Duchy of Champagne in northeastern France. After his initial education in Troyes where he received the traditional schooling in Bible and Talmud , Rashi studied at the academies of Worms and Mainz. Troyes was a busy commercial center attracting merchants not only from France but from all over Europe, while Worms was a port city on the left bank of the Rhine and an expanding commercial center.

The young Rashi's innate intellectual curiosity would clearly have been fueled by the cosmopolitan atmosphere that pervaded the regions of Troyes and Worms; by his observations of commerce, banking and trade; and by his conversations with visitors to these cities. From Rashi's writings we learn that he was a keen observer of nature and of human activities.

Rashi records in his Responsa, written later in life, that he married young, and pursued his studies in Troyes in great poverty. "Lacking bread and decent clothes, with a millstone on my neck, I served before them [the masters]…"

Rashi had three daughters. We have some information about two, Jochebed and Miriam, less about the third. Jochebed married R. Meir b. Samuel who attended the Mainz academy with Rashi. The couple had four sons, all of whom became famous scholars: Isaac, Samuel, Solomon, and the youngest, possibly the greatest of them, Jacob, popularly known as Rabbenu Tam. They all belonged to the group of French scholars who founded the school of tosafot. Miriam, married Judah b. Nathan, whose commentary to the end of Makkot is included in all editions of the Talmud (19b-24b).

Rashi's last years were marred by the massacres committed at the outset of the First Crusade (1095-96), in which he lost relatives and friends. He died in 1105 reportedly while writing the word "pure" in his commentary to the Talmud tractate of Makkot (19b). His burial place is not known definitively.

Rashi died in the year 1105. Within a century of his death, his Hebrew commentaries on the Bible and Talmud had spread from the communities of France and Germany to Spain and Africa, to Asia and Babylon. Considering the enormous expense and the mighty energies entailed in the production of handcopied books, the high cost of paper and parchment, and the great difficulties and obstacles encountered in their distribution in the eleventh and twelve centuries, the early popularity of Rashi, and the wide and unprecedented dissemination that his commentaries on the Bible achieved, are nothing short of remarkable.