Omarova was born in Kazakhstan, stating in a 2020 interview with Chris Hayes that "I went to high school in a small, tiny Kazak[h] provincial town on the outskirts of the Soviet Empire". Omarova graduated from Moscow State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship. Omarova moved to the United States in 1991, where she received a Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW), and a J.D. degree from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. At UW, Omarova defended her thesis, The Political Economy of Oil in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan.
Omarova practiced law in the Financial Institutions Group of New York-based law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell for six years. During the George W. Bush Administration, Omarova served in the Department of the Treasury as a special advisor on regulatory policy to the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance. During her time as an associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Omarova was a witness at a U.S. Senate hearing on bank ownership of energy facilities and warehouses.
In August 2021, Omarova's name was floated as a potential contender to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) under President Joe Biden.[ She was chosen to serve as Comptroller of the Currency in September 2021, pending Senate confirmation