After her 1979 tour—the only concert tour of her career—Bush released the 1980 album Never for Ever, which made her the first British solo female artist to top the UK album charts and the first female artist ever to enter the album chart at No. 1. In 1987, she won a BRIT Award for Best British Female Solo Artist. She has released nine albums, three of which topped the UK Albums Chart, and has had UK Top 10 hit singles with "Wuthering Heights", "Running Up That Hill", "King of the Mountain", "Babooshka", "The Man with the Child in His Eyes" and "Don't Give Up".

In 2002, Bush's songwriting ability was recognised with an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. In 2005 she released Aerial, her first album in 12 years. The album earned her a BRIT Award nomination for Best Album and another for Best Solo Female Artist. During the course of her career, she has also been nominated for three Grammy Awards.

Bush was born in Bexleyheath, Kent, to English physician Robert Bush and his Irish wife, Hannah Daly. She was raised in their farmhouse in East Wickham, Kent, with her older brothers, John and Paddy. Bush came from an artistic background: her mother was a former Irish folk dancer, her father was an accomplished pianist, Paddy worked as a musical-instrument maker and John was a poet and photographer. Both brothers were involved in the local folk music scene. John was a karateka at Goldsmiths College karate club and Bush also trained there, becoming known as "Ee-ee" because of her squeaky kiai. One of the instructors, Dave Hazard, later noted in his autobiography that her dance moves seemed to owe something to karate. Her family's musical influence inspired the young Kate to teach herself to play the piano at age 11. She also played the organ in a barn behind her parents' house and studied the violin. She soon began writing her own tunes and eventually added lyrics to them.

Bush attended St Joseph's Convent Grammar School (later the St Joseph's campus of Bexley College) and a Catholic girls' school on Woolwich Road in Abbey Wood, London, in the mid-1970s. During this time her family produced a demo tape with over 50 of her compositions, which was turned down by record labels. David Gilmour of Pink Floyd received the demo from Ricky Hopper, a mutual friend of Gilmour and the Bush family. Impressed with what he heard, Gilmour helped Bush get a more professional-sounding demo tape recorded that would be more saleable to the record companies. The tape was produced by Gilmour's friend Andrew Powell, who would go on to produce Bush's first two albums. The tape was sent to EMI executive Terry Slater, who would become famous for signing The Sex Pistols. Slater was impressed by the tape and signed her. At that time Pink Floyd was an important act to EMI. The British record industry was reaching a point of stagnation. Progressive rock was very popular and visually-oriented rock performers were growing in popularity, thus record labels looking for the next big thing were considering experimental acts.

For the first two years of her contract, Bush spent more time on school work than making an album. She left school after doing her mock A-levels and having gained ten GCE O-Level qualifications. In 2005, Bush stated in an interview with Mark Radcliffe on BBC Radio 2 that she believed EMI signed her before she was ready to make an album so that no other record company could offer her a contract. After the contract signing, EMI forwarded her a sizeable advance which she used to enrol in interpretive dance classes taught by Lindsay Kemp, a former teacher of David Bowie, and mime training with Adam Darius.

Bush also wrote and made demos of close to 200 songs, a few of which today can be found on bootleg recordings and are known as the Phoenix Recordings. From March to August 1977, she fronted the KT Bush Band at public houses around London – specifically at the Rose of Lee public house (now Dirty South) in Lewisham. The other three band members were Del Palmer (bass), Brian Bath (guitar), and Vic King (drums). She began recording her first album in August 1977, although two tracks had been recorded during the summer of 1975.

As part of her preparation for entering the studio, Bush toured pubs with the KT Bush Band. However, for her debut album The Kick Inside (1978) she was persuaded to use established session musicians, some of whom she would retain even after she had brought her band-mates back on board. Her brother Paddy Bush played the harmonica and mandolin, unlike on later albums where he would play more exotic instruments such as the balalaika and didgeridoo. Stuart Elliott played some of the drums and would become her main percussionist on subsequent albums.

Bush released The Kick Inside when she was 19 years old, but some of the songs had been written when she was as young as 13. EMI originally wanted the more rock-oriented track "James and the Cold Gun" to be her debut single, but Bush insisted that it should be "Wuthering Heights". Even at this early stage of her career, she had gained a reputation for her determination to have a say in decisions affecting her work. "Wuthering Heights" topped the UK and Australian charts and became an international hit. Bush became the first woman to reach number one in the UK charts with a self-penned song. A second single, "The Man with the Child in His Eyes", reached number six on the UK charts. It also made it onto the American Billboard Hot 100 where it reached number 85 in early 1979, but it was Bush's only single to do so for nearly another seven years. "The Man with the Child in His Eyes" went on to win her an Ivor Novello Award in 1979 for Outstanding British Lyric.

EMI capitalised on Bush's appearance by promoting the album with a poster of her in a tight pink top that emphasised her breasts. In an interview with NME magazine in 1982, Bush criticised the marketing technique, stating: "People weren't even generally aware that I wrote my own songs or played the piano. The media just promoted me as a female body. It's like I've had to prove that I'm an artist in a female body." In late 1978, EMI persuaded Bush to quickly record a follow-up album, Lionheart, to take advantage of the success of The Kick Inside. Bush has often expressed dissatisfaction with Lionheart, feeling that she needed more time to get it right. The album was rushed out of the studio in Nice on the French Riviera, making this her only album to be wholly recorded outside the UK. The album was produced by Andrew Powell, assisted by Bush. While it has its share of hits, most notably "Wow", it did not garner the same reception as her first album, reaching number six in the UK album charts. Lionheart is the first record on which her then-boyfriend Del Palmer worked as a bassist. Palmer went on to play bass or to engineer and record every album since.

Bush was displeased with being rushed into making the second album. She set up her own publishing company, Kate Bush Music, and her own management company, Novercia, to maintain complete control over her work. The board of directors of these companies was herself and members of her family. Following the album's release, she was required by EMI to undertake heavy promotional work and an exhausting tour, the only one of her career. The tour, named The Tour of Life, began in April 1979 and lasted six weeks. Typical of her determination to have control, she was involved in every aspect of the show's production, choreography, set design, and staff recruitment. The shows were noted for her dancing, complex lighting and her 17 costume changes per show. Because of her intention to dance as she sang, her sound engineers used a wire coat hanger and a radio microphone to fashion the first headset mic to be used by a rock performer, at least since the Swedish group Spotnicks used a very primitive version in the early 1960s.