Andrea Motis was born on May 9, 1995, in Barcelona. At seven she began trumpet lessons at the municipal music school in the city's Sant Andreu district, with the teacher Toni Gallard, and in 2007, at twelve, she joined the Sant Andreu Jazz Band, the youth ensemble run by the bassist and saxophonist Joan Chamorro. Chamorro, who also taught her saxophone, became her mentor, her producer on the early records and the leader of the group she worked in for years. She later studied at the IEA Oriol Martorell music institute and at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya.

Her first record, Joan Chamorro presenta Andrea Motis, was made in 2010, when she was fifteen. It is a set of standards with Motis on trumpet and voice, a rhythm section of Ignasi Terraza (piano), Josep Traver (guitar) and Esteve Pi (drums), and the American clarinetist Bobby Gordon as a featured guest. Feeling Good followed in 2012 (released in the United States by Whaling City Sound in 2015). On April 13 and 14, 2013, the group recorded at the Jamboree club in Barcelona with the tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton as guest, issued as Live at Jamboree Barcelona. On December 1, 2013, Motis and Chamorro premiered a fifteen-piece big band at the Auditori in Barcelona during the 45th Barcelona International Jazz Festival; it was recorded as Motis Chamorro Big Band Live (2015).

Her profile outside Catalonia grew through 2015. A concert she and Chamorro played with the Orquestra Simfònica del Vallès at the Palau de la Música Catalana on June 1, 2013, came out in November 2015 as Live at Palau de la Música, and from November 1 to 4 of that year she, Chamorro and Traver opened for the Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club on its farewell tour in Boston and New York, where Omara Portuondo sang "Dos gardenias" with her as an encore. Motis recorded for Impulse! in 2016, at Carriage Studios in Connecticut from March 25 to 30, with further sessions in Montoliu, Spain, in August and September. The three-track EP He's Funny That Way appeared that December, and Emotional Dance followed on February 17, 2017, co-produced by Chamorro with Brian Bacchus and Jay Newland. Besides the Barcelona core of Chamorro (bass), Terraza, Pi and Traver, it brought in American players, among them the vibraphonist Warren Wolf, the accordionist Gil Goldstein and the baritone saxophonist Scott Robinson, with Joel Frahm on tenor saxophone for three tracks and Perico Sambeat on soprano saxophone for one.

Do Outro Lado do Azul (Verve, March 1, 2019) turned to Brazilian songs by Ismael Silva, Paulinho da Viola, Luiz Tatit and others, a Serrat cover and two originals, "Brisa" and "Sense pressa." In September 2019, on the Barcelona day of Yo-Yo Ma's Bach Project tour, she played a duet with him on the Catalan folk song "El cant dels ocells," and a different version of it appears on his album Notes for the Future (2021). Colors & Shadows, released in November 2021, pairs her with the WDR Big Band Cologne under the trumpeter and arranger Michael Philip Mossman, with the trombonist Andy Hunter in the band's trombone section. Loopholes (2022), a quintet record with the Austrian guitarist and violinist Christoph Mallinger, came out on her own and was co-produced by Motis, Mallinger and the bassist Stephan Kondert. Febrero (2024) paired her with the Chilean string ensemble Camerata Papageno, Mallinger and the guitarist-arranger Federico Dannemann, and Intimate (Elemental Music, February 27, 2026) is a voice-and-guitars album with Traver and the Brazilian guitarist Jurandir da Silva, plus cello from Jaques Morelenbaum on two tracks.

Catalan Wikipedia lists three honors: the Enderrock popular-vote prize for best jazz album in March 2020, an ARC award in November 2022 for best jazz, classical or traditional tour, and the Manuel Margeliza prize in summer 2023.

Motis is a singer-trumpeter who sings in Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese and English, and her records move among the American songbook, Brazilian repertoire, Catalan songs and her own writing. Her voice is light and close to the microphone; the Guardian critic John Fordham, reviewing her at a London club in 2014, praised its breathy tone and relaxed, improvisational timing, and AllMusic's Matt Collar calls her music emotive and romantic. Her trumpet playing sits in the mainstream and swing vocabulary of Chamorro's band, where she learned it, and she also plays alto and soprano saxophone: she is credited on alto on Live at Jamboree Barcelona and on soprano on Do Outro Lado do Azul. Her projects since the Impulse! years have diverged: a Brazilian-flavored acoustic album, a big-band collaboration with a radio orchestra, an electronics-tinged quintet with Mallinger, a string-ensemble record of Latin American songs and, most recently, a quiet guitar-trio set.