Jiah was born as Nafisa Khan in New York and raised in Chelsea, London.
Jiah is the daughter of Ali Rizvi Khan, an American-Indian Muslim and Rabiya Amin, a Hindi film actress in the 1980s from Agra and most remembered in Tahir Hussain's 'Dulha Bikta Hai'. Jiah has been brought up single-handedly by her mother and she has two younger step sisters. Jiah Khan has been rumored to be the daughter of Tahir Hussain and therefore related to Aamir Khan, but she has strongly dismissed the story as false.