He is widely regarded as the best Armenian player of all time. At Shakhtar, Mkhitaryan set the league goalscoring record in the β13 season , and was named the league's Footballer of the Year. There, he won a DFL-Supercup in , and in the following campaign , registered the most assists in the Bundesliga, with 15, the second most in Europe. Mkhitaryan was a member of the senior side in his native country from until his international retirement in He is Armenia's all-time top goalscorer, scoring 32 goals in 95 matches, as well as registering their first hat-trick.
He has been named Armenian Footballer of the Year twelve times, including seven years consecutively from to Mkhitaryan was also voted the CIS Footballer of the Year in and , making him the first Armenian footballer to be named the best player from the post-Soviet countries.
His father was a prominent striker for FC Ararat Yerevan during the s, who died of a brain tumor at age 33 when Henrikh was seven years old.
The death of his father impacted Mkhitaryan significantly. He feels that if his father was still alive that "everything would be different. People who have watched Mkhitaryan and his father, say that their styles resemble each other very much. He has said, "I believe he sees me and is proud of me At the beginning of the s, the Mkhitaryan family moved to France , where Hamlet Mkhitaryan played for the now defunct ASOA Valence and helped them to be promoted to the second division. Mkhitaryan spent his early childhood in Valence.
As a child, he would watch his father play and always wanted to follow him to training. The Mkhitaryans returned to Yerevan in In the same year, Mkhitaryan joined the youth system of FC Pyunik. He graduated from the Institute of Physical Culture in Armenia. He studied economics at the Yerevan branch of the St. Petersburg Institute. Upon graduation, he planned to study there as a lawyer.
