The seemingly simple question of “how did the solar system form?” is still plaguing astronomers and astrophysicists in one way or another. The most commonly accepted theory of our solar system’s creation is called the Nebular Hypothesis.

The Nebular hypothesis says that our solar system condensed out of a part of a Giant Molecular Cloud filled with hydrogen gas about 4.6 billion years ago. While the cloud was somewhere around 60 light years across, the clump that would later form our solar system was around one third of a light year across. From there, the cloud of gas concentrated in its center due to gravity, and when the pressure and temperature inside became hot enough, the center of the Clump in the cloud became the star that we know today as the Sun.

So in answer to your question: Yes! Our solar system and pretty much every other Solar system starts with a star in the center.

Due to some complicated astrophysics, the process of creating a star like ours creates a thin Protoplanetary Disk of dense gas around the star (rather than a big cloud). From there, the rockier inner planets were formed from dust grains in the disk near the sun and the gas giants were formed from the gasses further from the sun.

There’s a lot more information about the formation of the solar system in this Wikipedia article solar system if you want to tackle this subject in greater depth. It also talks a little bit about some quirks in the current theories of how the solar system formed. (For example, some scientists believe that Uranus and Neptune may have formed in between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn and later migrated outward away from the sun!)

Here’s a short video describing the basics of our solar system’s formation!