Roy Asberry Cooper III was born on June 13, 1957 in Nashville, North Carolina to Beverly Batchelor and Roy Asberry Cooper II. His mother was a teacher and his father was a lawyer. He attended public school and worked on his parents' tobacco farm during summer. He graduated from Northern Nash Senior High School in 1975. He received the Morehead Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergraduate studies. He was elected as the president of the university's Young Democrats. He also earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1982. After practicing law with his family's law firm for a number of years, Cooper was elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1986. He was appointed to the North Carolina Senate in 1991 to fill a remaining term of a seat that was vacated. In 1997, he was elected as Democratic Majority Leader of the state Senate. He continued to practice law as the managing partner of the law firm Fields & Cooper in Rocky Mount and Nashville, North Carolina.

Cooper was elected North Carolina Attorney General in November 2000 and took office on January 6, 2001; he was re-elected for a second four-year term in 2004. Cooper was mentioned as a possible Democratic candidate for North Carolina governor in 2008, but he decided to run for re-election as Attorney General instead. He was easily re-elected, defeating Republican Bob Crumley and garnering more votes than any other statewide candidate in the 2008 Attorney General election. Cooper ran for Governor of North Carolina in the 2016 election against incumbent Republican Pat McCrory. In March 2016, the Republican-dominated North Carolina General Assembly passed the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act (commonly known as "House Bill 2"). Numerous corporations began boycotting the state in protest of the law, cancelling job investment and expansion plans. As a result of the economic damage caused by the law, McCrory's approval rating dramatically fell in the months preceding the election. The election was extremely close. After an extended legal battle, McCrory conceded the election to Cooper on December 5. Out of 4.7 million total ballots, Cooper won by a margin 10,227 votes. He garnered a majority of the votes in Meclkenburg, Wake, Guilford, Forsyth, Cumberland, Durham and Buncombe counties (the seven most populous), but lost to McCrory in the other 93. Dismayed by Cooper's win, the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed special legislation before he was inaugurated to reduce the power of the governor's office. In what The New York Times described as a "surprise special session" Republican legislators moved to strip away Cooper's powers before he would assume the governorship on January 1, 2017. Throughout the month of December, Cooper oversaw an attempt to repeal the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act. The repeal attempt failed as a deal between state Republican and Democratic lawmakers and Charlotte officials fell apart.

Roy Cooper is married to Kristin Cooper, who worked as a guardian ad litem for foster children in Wake County. The couple has three daughters-Hilary, Natalie, and Claire-who all graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They reside in the Executive Mansion. Cooper has taught Sunday school classes, serving as a deacon and elder.