Must a woman’s face be covered when she is shrouded?
Some scholars say yes: the Mālikīs hold it obligatory by agreement within their school. What is agreed without dispute is only that the whole body is shrouded. And the reason is shrouding, not the reason a living woman covers her face.
The ruling
As with a man, a woman's body is shrouded entirely, and on that there is no disagreement. The requirement to include the face is held more strongly for women, and some scholars — the Mālikīs among them — hold it obligatory by agreement within the school. Shaykh ʿIllīsh states it plainly: for a woman, covering the entire body including the face and palms is obligatory by agreement within the Mālikī school.
As for a woman, covering her entire body including her face and her palms is obligatory by agreement.
Why this is not a niqab question
It sits in this section because people ask it, but the reasoning is different, and conflating the two produces a bad argument in both directions.
A woman's face is covered in the shroud as part of shrouding, not merely to prevent men from seeing it.
Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī, writing on the shrouding of a woman's body, stops to distinguish the living case: it is obligatory to cover a living woman's face and palms not because the face and palms are ʿawrah, but because looking at them generally leads to fitnah.
The basis he gives there is not the basis of the shroud. Two rulings that look alike, resting on different grounds.
The distinction matters practically. Someone arguing "the face is covered even in death, therefore covering in life must be obligatory" is reasoning from a ruling whose basis is different. That argument does not appear here.
Check your understanding
Why does the note treat covering a deceased woman's face in her shroud as a separate question from the question of niqab in life?