When she was 10, Lafourcade sang in a Mariachi group.

She attended Instituto Anglo Español, a Catholic middle school, and studied painting, flute, theater, music, acting, piano, guitar, saxophone, and singing. She adapted and practiced the method with Lafourcade to help her rehabilitate through music, following a head injury from being kicked by a horse. Her mother studied piano with a specialty in musical pedagogy and is the creator of the Macarsi Method for musical training and personal development for children and educators. ĭuring her childhood, Lafourcade studied music with her mother, being influenced by artists like Shakira, Ely Guerra and Julieta Venegas imitating artists such as Gloria Trevi and Garibaldi. Her uncle was Chilean writer Enrique Lafourcade, a representative of the so-called 'Generation of the 50s'.

Her father is the Chilean musician Gastón Lafourcade, who had French parents, and her mother is the pianist María del Carmen Silva Contreras.

María Natalia Lafourcade Silva was born on 26 February 1984 in Mexico City, Mexico, and grew up in Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico, surrounded by music and art.