Shreya Ghoshal was born on 12 March 1984 to a Bengali Hindu family in Baharampur, Murshidabad district, West Bengal. She grew up in Rawatbhata, a small town near Kota in Rajasthan. Her father, Bishwajit Ghoshal is an electrical engineer and works for the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, and her mother, Sarmistha Ghoshal, is a literature post-graduate. She has a younger brother, Soumyadeep Ghoshal. At the age of four, she started learning music.
Shreya Ghoshal completed her schooling up to eighth grade at the Atomic Energy Central School in Rawatbhata. In 1995, she won the All India Light Vocal Music Competition, New Delhi, organised by Sangam Kala Group, in Light Vocal group in sub-junior level. In 1997, when her father was transferred to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, she was relocated to Mumbai, with her family and studied at the Atomic Energy Central School in Anushakti Nagar. She joined the Atomic Energy Junior College to study science. She withdrew from the junior college and enrolled at the SIES College of Arts, Science, and Commerce in Mumbai, where she took up arts with English as her major.
Her mother used to help her in her rehearsals and she accompanied her on the Tanpura and started practicing mostly Bengali songs. At the age of six, Ghoshal started with her formal training in classical music. She acquired training from Late Kalyanji Bhai for 18 months and continued her classical music training with Late Mukta Bhide in Mumbai. Her first stage performance was made at a club's annual function. When she turned six, she started her lessons in Hindustani classical music. In 2000, at the age of sixteen, she participated and won the television music reality show Sa Re Ga Ma (now Sa Re Ga Ma Pa) on the channel Zee TV.
On 5 February 2015, Ghoshal married her childhood friend Shiladitya Mukhopadhyaya in a traditional Bengali ceremony. Before getting married, Ghoshal dated him for almost 10 years. According to Ghoshal, apart from being a singer she loves to travel and read books but it's cooking that has a healing effect on her.
