Daniel Hope was born in Durban in 1974. When he was six months old, his father, the distinguished novelist, poet and anti-apartheid activist Christopher Hope, was finally granted an exit visa. The family went first to Paris, then to London, where Daniel's mother Eleanor was engaged by Yehudi Menuhin to be his secretary, later becoming the celebrated violinist and conductor's long-time manager. In 1978 Hope began to study the violin in London with Sheila Nelson. Six years later he commenced his studies at the Royal College of Music with Itzhak Rashkovsky, Felix Andrievsky and Grigory Zhislin.