T'Challa was born in the small African nation of Wakanda. His father was T'Chaka, the sovereign ruler of the nation, a well-respected and beloved king. T'Challa was raised to believe in the highest of moral principles and a strict code of conduct following the customs of their culture. He was being groomed to be the future king of Wakanda, and he was eager to learn, admiring his father with absolute devotion and love.
As he reached schooling age, the Wakandan royal family was prepared to send him abroad to learn from the finest educational institutions in the world (that is, after a few months of dallying about in the wilds in young love with a girl named Ororo, who would later become Storm of the X-Men)... and that's when cruel tragedy struck. By sheer happenstance, it was discovered that meteor landings in Wakanda made the nation one of the only places in the world that a peculiar, rare and valuable metal known as vibranium could be mined. An enormous vibranium mound was turned into a sacred site by the Wakandan tribes, but a cruel and self-serving ivory hunter by the name of Ulysses Klaw decided to try to claim posession of the mound and destroy anyone in his path to riches... and this included T'Chaka. The slaying of T'Challa's father was vicious, and the young prince swore revenge... he managed to thwart the raid on the mound, but his vengeance was not served... but there were now other, more pressing matters to attend to. T'Challa was the heir to the throne of Wakanda, and he had to prove his ability to his countrymen. Various regents served as temporary rules while the young boy was schooled at the finest institutions in Europe and America, familiarizing himself with the world outside Wakanda, and he returned after earning a degree in physics to assume the throne.
T'Challa had two tests laying before him - he had to emerge victorious in unarmed combat against six of Wakanda's greatest warriors - which he did after a grueling, arduous match - and he had to venture into the jungle to obtain the sacred heart-shaped herb that granted special abilities to the finder... which he did after much hardship. With these two tests passed, the young T'Challa was crowned the king of Wakanda, and he donned the ceremonial garb of The Black Panther.
T'Challa had much respect to earn, but he did so with alarming ease. Wakanda began to see the use of vibranium, and since it's one of the only sources of the precious metal, the economy of Wakanda soon exploded with activity... and it became a very diverse nation indeed. The tribal traditions came into very sharp conflict with the new technologies being developed and the influx of foreign wealth, and tempers and relations between the tribes that denied this and wished to remain a secretive nation isolated from the world and the tribes that accepted this change became consistently tense and unsteady, but T'Challa's administration managed to keep the peace with compromises. He's not without his enemies and detractors, but most Wakandans were willing to give T'Challa the chance to prove himself a worthy successor to his father, and the new found prosperity helped solidify his place in the pantheon. The fact that he had a voracious appetite for knowledge and a powerful drive to do right by his people and by his father helped keep him in the know and helped him deal with the myriad problems his growing country faced.
Years passed, T'Challa matured even more, assuming evermore duties as he aged, taking them from the advisers that had aided him during his childhood reign. The news of the rise of superpowered beings did not escape Wakanda as the economy became thriving despite its relative secrecy. This called into question a matter of national defense, and the most prominent beings needed to be evaluated and understood. With that understanding, the Fantastic Four were lured to Wakanda so that the Panther could test himself and his resources against the mightiest of them all, and he came out on top before revealing himself to them and forming an alliance with them.
Soon after this, the Masters of Evil attempted to invade Wakanda for their own nefarious purposes, which brought the Avengers to the small African nation for the first time. Together with T'Challa, they drove the villains out of the country, and Captain America offered T'Challa a roster slot in the Avengers. Normally, a king would not abandon his country and kingdom to gallavant around with costumed adventurers, but he felt this was an invaluable opportunity to study and evaluate the powerful American superheroes from the inside, and so he left a regent in his place and joined the team, learning all he could about them - their strengths and weaknesses, and this is when he first started coming up with countermeasures and contingency plans for as many foreseeable situations as he possibly could. He served justly and capably as an Avenger, earning the trust of many of his teammates and a reputation as a true hero, if a more mysterious and enigmatic one. The Black Panther attire was not a costume to him, like other heroes' outfits were to them. The attire is ceremonial in nature, and thus there was not a lot he would have in common with many of his teammates. The fact that he led a nation only compounded that. So in an effort to better understand their motivations, as well as to educate himself even further about American existence, for a brief time he also maintained an identity as a Brooklyn schoolteacher named Luke Charles, which also served to help educate young black children in America about their cultural heritage.
However, there was a man who was beginning to engineer T'Challa's downfall back in Wakanda. N'Jadaka was a young Wakandan who was used as a slave worker by Klaw's troops when the villain first came to the nation to harvest the vibranium ore. When his crew fled the country after T'Challa's desperation drove them off, N'Jadaka was taken with them to America, only to escape his captors. With no way to return to Wakanda, he grew to blame T'Chaka for his situation, and T'Challa by extension. He remained in America, Harlem in particular, changed his name to Erik Killmonger and began educating himself, succeeding with determination, until the Panther joined the Avengers, which prompted Killmonger to contact him and explain his situation. T'Challa promptly arranged for Killmonger to return to Wakanda, and once he returned to his village, he began to spread the word of discontent and insurrection, gathering an army of the like-minded, who believed in him enough to rename their village "N'Jadaka." He also discovered the Resurrection Altar, which gave off a mysterious radiation that gave some of his followers superhuman powers, calling them death regiments. T'Challa finally got word that his nation was in trouble, and he immediately left the Avengers to deal with the situation. After Killmonger destroyed a small fishing village, Panther confronted him upon Warrior Falls and was bested in combat by the much bigger and stronger Killmonger, and he was tossed from the falls, left for dead. As his body drifted off, T'Challa was rescued by a tourist woman who happened to be bathing in the river, a woman who would become the great love of his life. She was a social worker and jazz singer by the name of Monica Lynne. She helped him regain his strength, and the Panther then took his loyalists and decimated the army in the village of N'Jadaka, then tracking Killmonger down to the Altar, where once again, T'Challa was defeated, yet managed to survive and pursue Killmonger to Serpent Valley, where the villain was marshalling prehistoric beasts for use against the Panther, intending to distract him long enough to launch an attack on Central Wakanda. T'Challa prevailed in time to confront Killmonger one more time at Warrior Falls, and the intervention of a boy named Kantu, who's father was killed by Killmonger's forces, is the only thing that saved T'Challa, as Killmonger was knocked over the falls and found to be dead. This ordeal affected T'Challa greatly, shaking his confidence and prompting him to become a more forward-thinking, contingency-plan making kind of guy.
However, his relationship with Monica was a storied one, intense and dramatic, as she was drawn to this regal, intelligent statesman, and he was drawn to her honesty, purity and artistry, and it culiminated in a brief engagement. However, there was significant dissention within the Wakandan populace about their king being betrothed to an outsider, and the static generated by this, as well as Monica suffering one too many near-death experiences at the hands of T'Challa's myriad enemies resulted in his breaking off the engagement, unable to take the constant stress of life as the Black Panther's wife. This decision devastated T'Challa and caused him withdraw within himself even more than he already did, devoting himself intensely to the governership of Wakanda.
Over the following years, the Black Panther would be pulled from his Wakandan throne to battle the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and Dragon Circle I in America. He would be condended against the Collectors. Defeat enemies such as Jakarra and Kiber the Cruel and would even team up with Iron Man against Eric Killmonger as a resurrected zombie that was brought back to life by the Mandarin. Soon thereafter the Black Panther would fall out of favor with the Panther God and would struggle against the Azanian government and the Supremacists. Eventually he would find the connection reestablished iwith the Panther God and regain much of what he had lost. And finally, most recently, the Panther would battle Solomon Prey.
It is now that we open a new chapter in the Panther's life. His Wakanda is quite stable and he's now in a position to venture beyond the wilds of Africa to pursue those that would misuse his country's technology and attempt to corrupt his people.