Launched on 16 October 1913 at Portsmouth, Hampshire, she entered service in January 1915.

Still undergoing tests in the Mediterranean, the Queen Elizabeth was sent to the Dardanelles to try to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. The Queen Elizabeth was a modern battleship, and with a number of battlecruisers and pre-dreadnought battleships in the war, she sailed as flagship for the early naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign, and was to lead the first line of British battleships on 18 March 1915 into the battle. In an attempted military invasion at Gallipoli on 25 April, the Queen Elizabeth was the flagship for General Sir Ian Hamilton, commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. After HMS Goliath was sunk by a Turkish torpedo boat on 12 May, the Queen Elizabeth was withdrawn, was sent with the 5th Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet based at Scapa Flow, but she missed the Battle of Jutland, being in dock for maintenance.

Between the wars she was the flagship of the Atlantic Fleet from 1919 to 1924, then she was the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet. After a refit, she rejoined the Fleet in 1927. After a brief time with the Atlantic Fleet in 1929, she returned to the Mediterranean, serving until 1937. In the 1930s she took part in a non-intervention blockade during the Spanish Civil War.

She was rebuilt twice between the world wars, in 1926–1927 and again 1937-1941. Reconstruction was completed in January 1941, and the Queen Elizabeth rejoined the Mediterranean Fleet, covering the evacuation of Crete in June 1941. In an attack on 19 December 1941 in the harbour at Alexandria, Egypt, she lost of nine of her men, and was grounded on the harbour bottom. After temporary repairs in Alexandria in June 1942, she steamed through the Suez Canal, round Africa to the Navy Yard in Norfolk, Virginia in the United States, and was fully repaired by June 1943.

Queen Elizabeth joined the Home Fleet, and then in January 1945 joined the Eastern Fleet, and took part in raids on Japanese bases in Indonesia. In August 1945 she was placed in reserve, being finally ‘paid off’ and scrapped in July 1948.