Portman parents met at a Jewish student center at Ohio State University, where her mother sold tickets. They corresponded after her father returned to Israel and was married when her mother visited a few years later. In 1984, when Portman was three years old, the family moved to the U.S., where her father received his medical education. The family first lived in Washington, DC, where Portman attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, but moved to Connecticut in 1988 and later settled in Long Island, New York, 1990.
Portman took graduate courses at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in spring 2004. In March 2006 she appeared as a guest lecturer at a Columbia University course in terrorism and counter terrorism, where she talked about her film V for Vendetta.
