Marufa was born on May 14, 1966 in the City of Kabul, Afghanistan and is a graduate of the Faculty of Law at Tajik State University. After attaining her undergraduate and graduate degrees in law and jurisprudence, she served as a lecturer at Kabul University in 1989. In 1992, she and her family lived as refugees in Russia after escaping the Afghan civil war. (The Mujahedeen targeted citizens with foreign education because educated professionals were seen as a threat to their regime.) In 1998, she and her husband immigrated to Canada as part of the skilled worker class. 

After settling in Hamilton, Marufa spent 11 years working as the director of the Resettlement Assistance Program which was tasked with settling government-assisted refugees in Canada.  In 2011, she started her new position as the executive director of the Immigrant Culture and Art Association (ICAA) while simultaneously rekindling her connection to the academic world. She has devoted the last three years to studying issues of gender and social justice from a feminist perspective. She defended her second Master of Arts degree in 2016 in McMaster University’s Gender Studies and Feminist Research (GSFR) program.