Short answers, pulled from the story.
Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet, and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, widely considered one of the world's first novels. "Murasaki Shikibu" is a descriptive name, and her personal name is unknown.
Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji, The Diary of Lady Murasaki, and Poetic Memoirs, a collection of 128 poems. The Tale of Genji is a three-part novel spanning 1100 pages and 54 chapters, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012.
Murasaki Shikibu was born around 973 in Heian-kyō. Most scholars accept 1014 as the date of her death, which would make her 41, though Richard Bowring believes she may have lived until as late as 1025.
Murasaki Shikibu learned classical Chinese by listening as her younger brother Nobunori was taught the language for a government career. Raised in her scholar father's household, she became so proficient that he lamented she had not been born a man.
Fujiwara no Michinaga brought Murasaki Shikibu to his daughter Empress Shōshi's court around 1005 or 1006, most likely because of her reputation as a writer. He wanted skilled women around Shōshi to build a rival salon and to educate his daughter, including secretly teaching her Chinese.
The Tale of Genji is recognized as one of the world's first novels and a classic of Japanese literature that reflects Heian court society at its peak. Within a century of Murasaki's death it was studied by scholars, and reviewers of the 1933 translation compared it to Austen, Proust, and Shakespeare.