Naguib Ilyas al-Rihani was born in 1890 in Bab El Shaa'ria district in Cairo/Egypt. He studied in the French Ecole Frere until the age of 15. His father worked in horse trading and when he died, Naguib had to leave school and start working to earn his living and support his family that consisted of his mother and two brothers.

In his quest for a job, he worked in the Agriculture Bank in Cairo and later on in the Sugar Company in Nagaa Hamady region. He could not however give up his dream of becoming an actor.

In the beginning, Rihani's mother, Mrs. Latifa, was against the idea of her son becoming an actor, but later on, when he was famous she was very proud of being his mother.

It is surprising to know that al-Rihani always wished to become a super tragedian and that becoming a comedian was never on his plan, but fortunately he was successful in both tragedy and comedy.

His comedic skills were first discovered by his fellow friend, the great director and actor Aziz Eid.

The Great Theatre and Cinema actor Naguib al-Rihani was and still being known as “KeshKesh Beik”, the title character of a play he wrote and performed early in his life.

Naguib al-Rihani was also known as “Charlie Chaplin of the East”; according to several critics, Naguib al-Rihani and Charlie Chaplin had several things in common among which were their difficult beginnings and the main themes they chose for their artistic work. Both, al-Rihani and Chaplin, chose to deal with the psychological insight of the poor class against the unjust aristocratic class, making fun of aristocracy in a sarcastic way.

Naguib al-Rihani played a great role in the development of the Egyptian theater at a time when theaters were presenting comedic sketches that were very silly using meaningless words and actors as dummies doing ridiculous movements just to arouse laughter of the audience, but Rihani had different ethical and valuable visions.

Beside his natural gift, Rihani gained a lot of experience from working with different famous artistic troupes at that time.

In 1916 Rihani joined the famous actor Stefan Rosty in working at "De Rose" Casino.

Later on, in 1918, Rihani started a new type of theatre which is the Musical Theatre or what is called the “Operetta” in which he co-operated with the famous musician Sayed Darweesh as well as the famous writer Badie Khairy, and together they presented several successful musical plays or “Operettas”.

He toured with his troupe” South America, Lebanon and Syria. In the final stage of his artistic life, Rihani starred and wrote several successful movies with famous singers and actors, such as Laila Mourad, Aziz Osman, Anwar Wagdy, Abdul Fattah El Kosary, Youssef Wahby, Hassan Fayek, Taheya Karyouka, Bishara Wakeem and many others.

In all his plays and movies, Rihani was always targeting the amusement of the Egyptian poor class and always insisted to adapt his topics, especially those translated from French and English, to the Egyptian environment so that his target class can easily understand and react with his work.

Rihani died in 1949.