Gro Brundtland is a Norwegian politician (Arbeiderpartiet), who served three terms as the 29th prime minister of Norway (1981, 1986–1989, and 1990–1996), as the leader of the Labour Party from 1981 to 1992, and as the director-general of the World Health Organization from 1998 to 2003. She is also known for having chaired the Brundtland Commission which presented the Brundtland Report on sustainable development.

Brundtland was born in Oslo in 1939, the daughter of physician and politician Gudmund Harlem and Inga Margareta Elisabet Brynolf (1918–2005). She has a younger brother, Lars and a younger sister, Hanne.

In 1963, Brundtland graduated with a medical degree, a cand.med. from the University of Oslo. She took her master's degree at Harvard University in 1965, as a Master of Public Health.

She married Arne Olav Brundtland on 9 December 1960. They had four children; one is deceased. They own a house in the south of France.

Brundtland was operated on for uterine cancer in 2002 at Oslo University Hospital, Ullevål. In 2008 it became known that during 2007 she had received two treatments at Ullevål, paid for by Norwegian public expenditures. Since she had previously notified the Norwegian authorities that she had changed residence to France, she was no longer entitled to Norwegian social security benefits. Following media attention surrounding the matter, Brundtland decided to change residence once more, back to Norway, and she also announced that she would be paying for the treatments herself. Brundtland has claimed to suffer from electrical sensitivity which causes headaches when someone uses a mobile phone near her.