Bebel Gilberto was born Isabel Buarque de Hollanda Gilberto de Oliveira on May 12, 1966, in New York City, where her parents were briefly living. Her father is the bossa nova pioneer João Gilberto and her mother was the singer Miúcha; her uncle is the songwriter Chico Buarque. Her childhood followed her parents' travels. She lived in Mexico at three and in Rio de Janeiro from the age of five, and after her parents separated when she was seven she divided her time between Rio with her mother and New York with her father. Caetano Veloso, David Byrne and Stan Getz were among the musicians who came through her father's house to work.

The jazz connection was close and concrete. Getz had made Getz/Gilberto with her father in 1964, and in 1976 he recorded The Best of Two Worlds for Columbia with João Gilberto and Miúcha. Bebel has said she first heard that project on cassettes her parents mailed to her, followed the mixing once she was back in New York, and that when she and her mother were in the city they stayed at Getz's house. As a girl she sang at Carnegie Hall alongside her mother and Getz. Her first recordings were also family affairs: Miúcha made two albums with Antonio Carlos Jobim, and the second, Miúcha & Tom Jobim (RCA Victor, 1979), credits Bebel with backing vocals. That record has Jobim at the piano, Ron Carter on bass, Oscar Castro-Neves on guitar and orchestrations by João Donato and Castro-Neves, which is about as direct a line into bossa nova's jazz side as a child could have had.

Her own career began in Rio's pop scene. She appeared as a child in the stage musicals Saltimbancos and Pirlimpimpim, and her solo debut was a self-titled 1986 EP on WEA that included "Preciso Dizer Que Te Amo," written with her friend Cazuza and Dé Palmeira of the rock band Barão Vermelho. She moved to Manhattan in 1991 and has lived there since, dividing her time with Brazil. In New York she became a guest voice for the city's dance and electronic producers: Towa Tei's Future Listening! (1994) has her singing on four tracks including "Technova" and "Batucada," she appeared on the Red Hot + Rio benefit album in 1996, Thievery Corporation issued "So Com Você" with her in 1998, and she sang "Caipirinha" on Mike Patton's Peeping Tom project.

Tanto Tempo, released April 25, 2000, on Ziriguiboom, an imprint of Crammed Discs, made her an international name. It was produced by the Serbian-born, Brazil-based producer Suba, who died in a studio fire before the record came out, and co-produced by Béco Dranoff. The album set bossa nova and samba material against drum programming and sampled beats: it opens with Baden Powell and Vinícius de Moraes's "Samba da Bênção" over an Amon Tobin track, includes Marcos Valle's "So Nice (Summer Samba)," and samples Gilberto Gil's voice on the title song. It sold about a million copies worldwide by 2004, and DownBeat was among the magazines that gave it four stars. On July 10, 2001, she played the Miles Davis Hall at the Montreux Jazz Festival, and the same year she sang on "The View From Her Room" for Kyoto Jazz Massive, a Japanese project that blends jazz and club music.

Bebel Gilberto (2004) was built with the producer and arranger Marius de Vries, with a string section, and moved toward an acoustic lounge sound. It earned the first of four Grammy nominations, in the Contemporary World Music Album category; Momento (2007), which includes a version of Cole Porter's "Night and Day," earned the second. In 2009 she moved to Verve, the American jazz label, for All in One, recorded in New York, Jamaica and Bahia with a group of producers that included Mark Ronson, Mario Caldato Jr., Carlinhos Brown and Daniel Jobim, grandson of Antonio Carlos Jobim, who joins her on João Gilberto's "Bim Bom." The album reached No. 3 on Billboard's World Albums chart and was her third Grammy nomination. The same year she appeared on Nat King Cole's Re: Generations and on Ben Perowsky's Moodswing Orchestra. In 2011 she voiced the bird Eva in the animated film Rio, a role she repeated in Rio 2 (2014).

Tudo (2014), produced by Mario Caldato Jr., was her first studio album in five years, and its title song was nominated for a Latin Grammy for Best Brazilian Song. On February 18, 2015, she opened the Portland Jazz Festival at the Newmark Theatre as its headliner. Agora (2020), written and produced with the New York multi-instrumentalist Thomas Bartlett, brought her a nomination for Best Global Music Album, and João (2023), also produced by Bartlett, is a record of eleven songs written or sung by her father, among them "Desafinado" and Jobim's "Caminhos Cruzados." She has described it as a love letter to him. She continues to tour behind it, and Houston's Hobby Center has booked her for two 25th-anniversary performances of Tanto Tempo in January 2027.

Bebel Gilberto is a bossa nova and electronic-lounge singer first, and the jazz in her story comes mostly through family, repertoire and the rooms she plays. Her close, unforced delivery descends from her father's, and her records are built around composed songs, Brazilian and otherwise, set in studio productions that run from sampled beats on Tanto Tempo to the acoustic arrangements of Agora and João. All four of her Grammy nominations came in world music categories, none in jazz. What ties her to the jazz world is documented rather than assumed: a childhood in Stan Getz's orbit and on a Jobim record with Ron Carter, a Verve album, Montreux and Portland Jazz Festival bookings, standards such as "Night and Day" and "Desafinado," and club-jazz collaborators like Kyoto Jazz Massive. Her pop and electronic side is just as real and larger commercially: her songs have been placed in films and television series including Sex and the City and Six Feet Under, and the remix albums that followed Tanto Tempo and Bebel Gilberto were part of how she reached a club audience. Bossa nova and Brazilian pop are not in the site's subgenre list, so her tags (Crossover Jazz, Nu Jazz, Latin Jazz) are the nearest fits, not exact ones.