Hurst was born on October 19, 1885, in Hamilton, Ohio, to shoe-factory owner Samuel Hurst and his wife Rose (née Koppel), who were assimilated Jewish emigrants from Bavaria. A younger sister died of diphtheria at age three, leaving Hurst as her parents' only surviving child. She grew up at 5641 Cates Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri and was a student at St. Louis's Central High School. She attended Washington University and graduated in 1909 at age 24. In her autobiography, she portrayed her family as comfortably middle-class, except for a two-year stint in a boarding house necessitated by a sudden financial downturn, which sparked her initial interest in the plight of the poor. However, this has been challenged by later researchers, including her biographer Brooke Kroeger and literary historian Susan Koppelman. According to Koppelman, while Fannie Hurst was growing up, her father changed businesses four times, never achieved much financial success, and failed in business at least once, and the Hurst family lived at 11 different boarding houses before Fannie turned 16. Kroeger wrote that while Samuel and Rose Hurst did eventually move to a house in a fashionable section of St. Louis, this did not occur until Fannie Hurst's third year of college, rather than during her childhood.