It's a very common thing. A very unscientific quick search in Google Books led me to the oldest example I could find in a minute or two being a mention in The Dublin Review in 1844 reviewing a book on the correspondence of Edmund Burke talking about the loss of material that would have been indispensable for an authorised biography. It's very unlikely to be remotely the oldest use of the term.

And that mention also gets to why authors often seek authorisation and why subjects often authorise them: Authors gain access to the subject and/or often their material, while the subject or their estates gains some control over how they are portrayed.