Gloria (Feingold) Malek was born on September 25, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish parents. She lived in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn where she attended school (PS 90, JHS 109, and Thomas Jefferson High School) and raised her family. Starting in 1957 she resided in the Linden Houses, where she lived for seventeen years. After briefly moving to California, she returned to East New York and lived in Starrett City for fourteen years. She was active in political and community organizations, including the Emma Lazarus Federation of Jewish Women's Clubs, the Women's Strike for Peace, East New York Action, and especially the United Community Centers (of which she serves on the Board of Directors). Malek was married and had two children. Following the end of her first marriage she was in a long-term interracial relationship. She remained in East New York until the 1990s, when she moved to the Stuyvesant Town residential development in Manhattan.