The 17-year-old was fired at from point blank range on her school bus in 2012.
It was her punishment for keeping a written diary about her life under Taliban rule, which was broadcast by the BBC.
After recovering from her injuries, she took her campaign global.
She believed girls had the right to stay in school to be educated, which the Taliban was against.
"My message for children all around the world is that they should stand up for their rights," Malala Yousafzai told a press conference in Birmingham.
She also revealed that she was in a chemistry class when a teacher told her she had won the award.
The prestigious Nobel Prize is the highest accolade in the academic world, created in 1901 by Swedish inventor and manufacturer Alfred Nobel.
This year Malala shares the prize with Indian child rights campaigner, Kailash Satyarthi.
The Nobel Prize is decided by a committee of five people in Norway.
Thousands of people are nominated each year and the list is long and often secretive.
The award has been won by US presidents, world campaigners and even the European Union's won it.
Before Malala the youngest person to receive a Nobel Prize was Sir William Lawrence Bragg at the age of 25 for physics in 1915.
Bragg and his father, Sir William Henry Bragg, won the award jointly for their work with X-ray spectra, X-ray diffraction and crystal structure.
Malala, who now lives in Birmingham, has become well known for her education campaign work.
She spent her 16th birthday giving a speech to the UN and Angelina Jolie set up a Malala Fund as a charity to help girls in education.
Dedicated to her work, the teenager has said in the past that she doesn't use social media so she can focus on her studies.
School friends of Malala, Shazia Ramzan and Kainat Riaz, who were also injured in gun cross-fire on the school bus in Pakistan, told Newsbeat: "We are very proud about the award."
The young women, who now study in the UK, talked about the freedom they now enjoy and how Malala "likes to play tennis, read books and listens to slow, classical music".
Shazia Ramzan added: "In my city [in Pakistan] girls' education is improved because of Malala."
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of five awards; the other categories are chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine and literature.
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Seven photographs taken in the Norfolk countryside by photographer Josh Olins will appear in the June edition.
In her first sitting for a magazine, the duchess is seen looking relaxed and wearing casual clothes.
The shoot was in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, where two images are being displayed in the Vogue 100: A Century of Style exhibition.
The duchess, who has a keen interest in photography, has been patron of the National Portrait Gallery since 2012.
Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait Gallery, said: "Josh has captured the duchess exactly as she is - full of life, with a great sense of humour, thoughtful and intelligent, and in fact, very beautiful."
He said the images also encapsulated what Vogue had done over the past 100 years - "to pair the best photographers with the great personalities of the day, in order to reflect broader shifts in culture and society".
Alexandra Shulman, editor-in-chief of British Vogue, said: "To be able to publish a photographic shoot with the Duchess of Cambridge has been one of my greatest ambitions for the magazine."
The collaboration for the June edition had resulted in "a true celebration of our centenary as well as a fitting tribute to a young woman whose interest in both photography and the countryside is well known", she said.
Other royal portraits to have featured in the fashion magazine include Diana, Princess of Wales - who graced the cover four times - and Princess Anne.
The duchess is to visit the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery on Wednesday, Kensington Palace said.
Teenager Malala Yousafzai from Pakistan, who was shot in the head by the Taliban, has become the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
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The Duchess of Cambridge will feature on the cover of British Vogue to mark the magazine's centenary.