Rausing was born in Gothenburg in 1926, the second son of industrialist Ruben Rausing and his wife Elisabeth (née Varenius). Rausing had two brothers, Gad and Sven.

Rausing studied Economics, Statistics and Russian at Lund University, graduating in 1948. In 1954, Rausing was appointed managing director of Tetra Pak and his brother Gad deputy managing director. Rausing became chairman in 1985. He left the company in 1993, and sold his 50% share of the company to Gad in 1995.

Tetra Pak’s success in the 1970s and 1980s has been credited to the leadership of Hans and Gad Rausing, who turned the six-person family business into a multinational company. Over the course of his career, Rausing became a specialist in Russian affairs and made many investments in Russia and Ukraine. He was responsible for Tetra Pak’s Russian market, and negotiated the first Tetra Pak machine export to the Soviet Union in 1959, eventually making Tetra Pak the largest foreign employer in Russia.

From 2001 to 2012, Rausing and his family donated £886,000 to the UK’s Conservative Party.

Hans Rausing received an honorary doctorate from Lund University. He was a visiting professor at Mälardalens Högskola, Sweden, and honorary professor at the University of Dubna, Russia. He was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 2006. He was an honorary fellow of the Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, and in 2011 was made an honorary freeman and liveryman at the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, London.

Rausing was a resident of the UK from 1982 until his death. He lived in Wadhurst, East Sussex, at the time of his death on 30 August 2019.