Sonakhanim Aliyeva was born on 22 August 1975 in Baku. In 1982 she entered the first grade of secondary school No. 240 in Baku. From 1990 to 1994 she continued her education at the Baku Pre-School Pedagogical College. In 1994 Sonakhanim Aliyeva was admitted to the drama and film acting faculty of the Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts, graduating from that institution in 1999. She began her career at the Ilham Miniature Theatre, working there from 1998 to 2006. During these years she was remembered for the roles she created in productions such as My Luck's Trick, The Ear, The Blanket, The End of the World, A Modern Wedding and Love in the Wardrobe. In 2006 she accepted an invitation from the Young Spectators' Theatre. At this theatre she has performed roles such as the housewife in Mother Goose, Gulmammad in Three Apples From Paradise, Hafiza khanum in The Fairy Enchantress, the Div in Puss in Boots, the shepherd in Miss Tik-Tak, the grandmother in The Grandmother's Trick, the French beauty in Aydin, the White Div in The Slender-Waisted Old Woman, and the sister in Cinderella, among other roles. Her first screen test came in 1995. As a first-year university student at the time, Sonakhanim Aliyeva was able to create a distinctively beautiful, specific supporting role in the short film Junior Lieutenant, directed by Rovshan Mammadov. After this she played the secretary in Eldar Guliyev's How Beautiful This World Is, a member of a criminal gang in Maharram Badirzade's multi-part film The Last Witness, the Armenian girl Gayane in the same director's Dance of the Swan, the secretary in Elchin Mamiyev's series Burnt Bridges, a neighbour woman in Elchin Mamiyev's film Chance, and the character Parvana in the episode "A Son's Grief" of the series If There Is Life. She has also appeared on screen playing the character Afat in the series Dance of the Moths, broadcast on one of the television channels.
