Mari Yamazaki was born in Tokyo in 1967. She moved to Italy at a young age, in1984, to attend the National Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where she studied art history and oil painting. She debuted as a manga artist in 1997. Between 2003 and 2013 she lived in Syria, Portugal and the United States. She has been based afterwards in Italy and Japan.
In 2010 she won the third edition of the Taisho Manga Award with “Thermae Romae”. In 2015 she won the Tezuka Osamu award as well as the New Face award by the Japanese Ministry of Education; by the same Ministry she received the 2015 Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award. In 2017 she was conferred by Italy’s President of the Republic the rank of Commander of the Order of the Star of Italy (Ordine della Stella d’Italia).
Her recently publications are: "Life without Borders" (Shogakukan), "Viola Mother" (Bunshu Shinsho), "Steve Jobs" (Kodansha, based on "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson), "Gli Artigiani", "Plinius" (Shinchosha, co-written with Miki Tori), and ”Olympia Cucross" (Shueisha). In 2022 her manga “Thermae Romae” was made by Netflix into an animated series released worldwide.
She is Visiting Professor at Tokyo Zokei University.