Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm and Wilhelm Karl Grimm were born on January 4, 1785, and February 24, 1786, respectively, in Hanau near Frankfurt in Hesse. They were among a family of nine children, six of whom survived infancy. Their early childhood was spent in the countryside in what has been described as an "idyllic" state. When the eldest brother Jacob was eleven years old, however, their father, Philipp Wilhelm, died, and the family moved into a cramped urban residence. Two years later, the children's grandfather also died, leaving them and their mother to struggle in reduced circumstances. (Modern psychologists have argued that this harsh family background influenced the ways the Brothers Grimm would interpret and present their tales. The Brothers tended to idealize and excuse fathers, leaving a predominance of female villains in the tales—the infamous wicked stepmothers. For example, the evil stepmother and stepsisters in “Cinderella”, the nefarious crone in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, and the kindly father in “The Frog King.”) Another influence is perhaps shown in the Grimms' fondness for stories such as The Twelve Brothers, which show one sister and several brothers (their own family structure) overcoming opposition.

The two brothers were educated at the Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Kassel and later both read law at the University of Marburg. They were in their early twenties when they began the linguistic and philological studies that would culminate in both Grimm's Law and their collected editions of fairy and folk tales. Though their collections of tales became immensely popular, they were essentially a byproduct of the linguistic research which was the Brothers' primary goal.

In 1830, they formed a household in Göttingen where they were to become professors.

In 1837, the Brothers Grimm joined five of their colleague professors at the University of Göttingen to protest against the abolition of the liberal constitution of the state of Hanover by King Ernest Augustus I, a reactionary son of King George III. This group came to be known in the German states as Die Göttinger Sieben (The Göttingen Seven). The two, along with the five others, protested against the abrogation. For this, the professors were fired from their university posts and three deported--including Jacob. Jacob settled in Kassel, outside Ernest's realm, and Wilhelm joined him there, both staying with their brother Ludwig. However, the next year, the two were invited to Berlin by the King of Prussia, and both settled there.

Wilhelm died in 1859; his elder brother Jacob died in 1863. They are buried in the St. Matthäus Kirchhof Cemetery in Schöneberg, Berlin. The Grimms helped foment a nationwide democratic public opinion in Germany and are cherished as the progenitors of the German democratic movement, whose revolution of 1848/1849 was crushed brutally by the Kingdom of Prussia, where there was established a constitutional monarchy.