Throughout her more than 55-year career, she starred in around 60 movies, 15 TV soap operas and 8 plays. As a singer, she sang about 100 songs.

Sultan's real name is Gamalat Abdel-Aal al-Haw. She was born on August 15, 1925 in Gharbeya to an Egyptian father and a Turkish mother. She was the third of five siblings; two brothers and three sisters. Sultan is the sister of singer Mohamed Fawzi.

Her first movie was "Set al-Hosn" (The Lady of Beauty) in 1950. Then, she met with actor Farid Shawqi (1922 – 1998) with whom she formed a duo that turned afterwards to a romance and to whom she later was married. The duo Sultan and Shawqi starred in many movies in the fifties among which are (Driver Hassan), (They Made me a Culprit), (Platform No. 5), (The Fraud) and (Whom do you Love).

After her divorce from Shawqi in the sixties, she married stage director Hassan Abdel-Salam. Meanwhile, she participated in a number of plays such as "Wedad al-Ghazeya" (Wedad, the Dancer) and (The Blue Angel).

Sultan is most famous for her roles in great movies like (A Woman on the Way), (Something Deep Inside), (The Choice), (Farewell-l Bonaparte), (The Return of the Prodigal Son), the last three of which were directed by Youssef Chahin. Her last movie was (From the First Glance) (2003).

She played the role of the mother in many TV series such as (Farewell Age Spring), (No, My Dearest Daughter), “Arabesque”, “Zizinia” and Naguib Mahfouz's trilogy.

She died on June 5, 2006.