Otunbayeva was born in Frunze (now Bishkek), in Kyrgyzstan in the Soviet Union. She got a degree in philosophy from Moscow State University in 1972. Then she was a senior professor and head of the philosophy department at Kyrgyz State National University for six years. In 1975 she got a Candidate of Sciences degree after writing a dissertation named "Critique of falsification of Marxist-Leninist dialectic by the philosophers of Frankfurt school".