Born on 7 May 1921 in Shiraz, Daneshvar finished her high school studies in her hometown. In 1938, she came to Tehran where she started studying Persian literature at Tehran University. Her father was a medical doctor and her mother was a painter. She wrote and translated many articles on women’s affairs and youths before her first collected short stories The Dying Fire (1948) was published. In 1949, she obtained her PhD in Persian literature from Tehran University. In 1950, she formed a union with Jalal Al-e Ahmad, the prominent Iranian writer.

In 1952-54, she went to Stanford University on a Fulbright scholarship. Upon her return to Iran, she was employed at Tehran University as an associate professor of art history, a post she held for twenty years.

Daneshvar is best-known for her novel Savushun. The story is narrated by a woman named Zari who tries to project her family during the turbulent years of World War II but she fails to do so. Crisis soon grips her family and disintegrates it. The first chapter of the book shows Zari with her husband Yusof at the marriage ceremony of the governor’s daughter. The British have deployed forces in the area and war has brought but famine and disease. The governor is a puppet of the foreigners and the merchants sell the supplies of people to the British forces and reduce people to more hunger and misery. Yusof, a man of nationalistic leanings, refuses to sell the supplies to the British forces. At the marriage ceremony, his conduct sparks the ire of the British people. His wife Zari tries to quiet him and the efforts of his brother to collaborate with the British come to waste. Duped by the British, the Qashqai khans come to Yusof to buy supplies so that they may sell them to the British and buy weapons instead to fight the Iranian army. However, Yusof does not agree. The city is rife with corruption, insecurity, and typhus. At home, Zari tries to keep things in order. In order to help the needy, Zari goes to prisons and madhouses and becomes familiar with the calamities which have blackened the fate of people there. Khosrow, Zari’s son, is drawn to political ideology and his teacher creates unrest and anxiety in their family. Gradually, Zari comes to fathom the social problems more than ever before. Zari is filled with anxiety for the life of Yusof until one day his body is brought to the house.
 

Other important works by Dansehvar include Whom Shall I Greet?, The Island of Bewilderment, and A City Like Paradise.