al-Hajj Hassan was born in the village of Nabi Chit in 1960, and graduated from Al-Ghobeiri public high school, in south Beirut. He fought against Israeli forces in 1982 as an early member of Hezbollah, and then traveled abroad to France to complete his higher education, likely in 1983. He obtained a PhD in Chemistry and Natural Physics from University of Orléans, in France in 1987, and is one of the founders of the Islamic Union of Lebanese Students in France. While in France, he also served as an Islamic preacher to Arab and French students. He returned to Lebanon in 1987, and since then has served as a professor in Lebanese University’s Science Faculty. That same year, he also helped found Hezbollah’s think-tank, The Consultative Center for Documentation and Studies, and was appointed as its head when it opened in 1988. In 1991, he was appointed the head of Hezbollah’s “Educational Mobilization.”

His career in politics began in 1996, when he was elected to parliament as Hezbollah’s representative for the Bekaa valley. He was reelected again to that position in 2000, and served as the chairman of the Agriculture and Tourism committee. He was elected again in 2005, and served as a member of the Public Works and Transportation Committee., and the Finance and Budget Committee. Upon his reelection in 2009 as the representative of Baalbek/al-Hermel, he was appointed as Minister of Agriculture in Saad Hariri’s first government, and retained that position under Prime Minister Najib Miqati in 2011. He is a member of the current Cabinet, serving as the Minister of Industry since 2016. He was reelected in May 2018 as Hezbollah’s representative in the Lebanese parliament for the Bekaa III (Baalbek/Al-Hermel) electoral district. He is married to Hayat Salhab and has four children.