Esther Azhari Moyal (1873–1948), intellectual, journalist, and feminist activist, made her mark in the Arab world entering the 20th century. She was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1873 to a modest Sephardic family. In 1884, at the age of eleven, she began her studies in Arabic and English with Muhammad al-Bakr, a prominent Arab writer. She later studied at the American College for Girls in Beirut. Upon graduation, she taught at Christian and Jewish schools in Beirut.

She is the only known female Jewish writer to be active in the modern Arabic Renaissance movement ("Nahḍa"). Fluent in both French and Arabic, she also read English and Hebrew, although she primarily wrote in Arabic, perhaps a testament to her deep identification with the language and culture.

She was a feminist activist who believed that women had the right to be intellectually nourished and educated. She was active in several women's organizations in Beirut in the 1890s: the Lebanese Women's League, Bākūrat Sūriya [The Dawn of Syria] and Nahḍat al-Nisā' [The Awakening Women], a group she co-founded.

In the 1890s, then in her twenties, she began to publish, mostly on women's issues, for several Arab journals. In 1894, she married a Palestinian Jewish doctor and activist, Shimon Moyal. The couple lived in Istanbul and Palestine and finally settled in Cairo due to better publishing conditions and intellectual freedom. On May 1, 1899, Esther Moyal founded the women's magazine al-ʿAila [The Family], which was widely praised and contained articles on modern domestic issues, women's health, household economics, parenting, literary topics, humor, entertainment, and global news. Although the magazine was for Arabic readers, she would occasionally discuss Jewish identity issues, quoting Rabbi Akiva as a source of authority. Al-Aila became a weekly newspaper in 1904.

Alongside journalism, literary translation was a key facet of her professional life. She translated dozens of European stories and novels into Arabic, including the novels of Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola. Inspired by the actions taken by Zola during the Dreyfus Affair, Moyal wrote a book about him in 1903.

In 1908 (or 1909), the Moyal family moved to Jaffa and became very involved in local politics. They envisioned a shared homeland for Jews, Christians, and Arabs within an Ottoman political framework. They also felt strongly that newly arrived European Jewish immigrants should assimilate culturally into the region and learn Arabic, rather than having Palestine become an outpost of Europe in the Middle East. This was something for which Herzl and other European Zionist leaders had advocated.

In Jaffa, Esther Moyal founded a new organization for Jewish women and still contributed to Arabic newspapers. She and Simon became joint editors of the periodical Sawt al-ʿUthmāniyya [The Voice of Ottomanism] in 1913. This Jewish newspaper written in Arabic defended Zionism. In early 1913, Shimon was appointed an Ottoman medical officer, and when World War I broke out, he was enlisted. He was killed in 1915, motivating Esther to move to France with her young children.

Sometime in the late 1930s or early 1940s, she returned to Palestine. She died in Tel Aviv in 1948, in relative obscurity, the very same year that the State of Israel achieved independence.