Mindi Abair was born on May 23, 1969, in St. Petersburg, Florida. AllMusic's biography says she was born on tour into a musical family, was playing piano by the age of five and was playing saxophone and writing songs within three years. In high school she was drum major of the Northside Christian School marching band in her junior and senior years and, as a senior, won the first-chair alto saxophone seat in the Florida All-State Jazz Band. She spent her first year of college on a full scholarship at the University of North Florida, whose jazz program was started by Rich Matteson, then transferred to Berklee College of Music in Boston on a scholarship, where she studied saxophone with Joe Viola and George Garzone. She graduated magna cum laude in 1991 with a degree in Woodwind Performance and had formed her first band while still a student.

Abair moved to Los Angeles in 1991, booked her band into clubs, coffee shops and hotels, and played solo on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, where keyboardist Bobby Lyle heard her and hired her to record and tour; she plays soprano and alto saxophone on his The Power of Touch (Atlantic Jazz, 1997). Over the following decade she toured as a saxophonist, singer and keyboardist with Adam Sandler, John Tesh, Jonathan Butler, Teena Marie and Rick Braun. She played the saxophone solo on Sandler's 1997 album What's Your Name? and sang on several of its tracks. In 1999 she joined the Backstreet Boys on their Millennium world tour, staying about a year and a half as saxophonist, keyboardist and percussionist, and she assembled Mandy Moore's first band and served as its musical director. Between tours she issued a self-titled CD in 1999 and then Always and Never the Same (2000), an all-vocal pop album released independently.

Her recording career took off when she signed with Verve and GRP. It Just Happens That Way (2003) put "Lucy's," "Save the Last Dance" and the title song in the top ten at jazz radio; Come as You Are (2004) was produced with her writing partner Matthew Hager; and Life Less Ordinary (2006), with guest vocals from Lalah Hathaway and Keb' Mo', reached No. 1 on Billboard's Contemporary Jazz chart and stayed in the top 20 for 45 weeks. She moved to Concord for Stars (Peak Records, May 6, 2008), a set of her own songs that put her singing and piano playing beside her saxophone and peaked at No. 4 on the Contemporary Jazz chart, and then made In Hi-Fi Stereo (Heads Up, 2010), whose "Be Beautiful" went to No. 1 on smooth jazz radio. From 2007 to 2015 she hosted the syndicated radio show Chill with Mindi Abair, which she took over from Chris Botti.

Her profile widened sharply in 2011 and 2012, when she was the featured saxophonist on American Idol; the judge Steven Tyler was so taken with her playing that he invited her to join Aerosmith on the summer leg of their 2012 world tour on saxophone and backing vocals. She also sat in with the CBS Orchestra on the Late Show with David Letterman in April 2012. In 2011 she published a book, How to Play Madison Square Garden: A Guide to Stage Performance, and from 2009 she held elected posts with the Los Angeles chapter of the Recording Academy, serving as chapter president from 2013 and as a national trustee from 2015. Summer Horns (Concord, 2013), a four-saxophone record with Dave Koz, Gerald Albright and Richard Elliot, was nominated for Best Pop Instrumental Album at the 56th Grammy Awards, and her own Wild Heart (Heads Up, May 27, 2014) debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Jazz Albums chart and was nominated for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album at the 57th Grammy Awards. Its guests included Gregg Allman, Joe Perry, Booker T. Jones, Keb' Mo', Max Weinberg and Trombone Shorty.

After touring Wild Heart with guitarist Randy Jacobs, she formed Mindi Abair and The Boneshakers with him in 2015; the band also included vocalist Sweet Pea Atkinson, keyboardist Rodney Lee, bassist and vocalist Derek Frank and drummer Third Richardson. They recorded Live in Seattle (2015) at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley, then cut The EastWest Sessions (September 15, 2017) in five days at EastWest Studios with producer Kevin Shirley; the album, with Joe Bonamassa on "Pretty Good for a Girl," reached No. 3 on Billboard's Blues Albums chart and won eight Independent Blues Awards in 2018, among them Artist of the Year. All I Got for Christmas Is the Blues (October 26, 2018) and No Good Deed (June 28, 2019, again produced by Shirley) followed, and she was nominated for the Blues Music Award for Best Instrumentalist: Horn in 2019, 2020 and 2021. She launched her own label and a web platform both named Pretty Good for a Girl, the platform aimed at celebrating exceptional women.

She returned to a solo project with Forever (March 18, 2022), self-produced with Bud Harner, which moves among jazz, pop, country, R&B and blues and has her singing alongside her saxophone; Steve Perry, Rick Braun, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Eric Bazilian and Raul Malo appear as guests. A holiday album, I Can't Wait for Christmas, followed on November 22, 2024, and Based on a True Story (June 13, 2025), produced by Wayne Rodrigues and Abair with guests including Marcus Miller, Kenny Lattimore, Bobby Lyle, Delisha Thomas and Arthur Thompson, gave her a No. 1 smooth jazz radio single in "Oooh-Aah (Catalina)." Since 2019 she has also run the lifestyle brand wineandjazz.com, which pairs wines with curated music playlists. As of November 2026 her official site presents Based on a True Story as her latest release.

Abair is a smooth jazz and pop-soul saxophonist who is also a singer and songwriter, and her career says so openly. The Contemporary Jazz and smooth jazz radio charts are where most of her records and singles landed through Wild Heart; her two Grammy nominations came in pop and contemporary instrumental categories rather than jazz ones; and since 2015 much of her output has been blues-rock with The Boneshakers, charting on Billboard's Blues Albums chart. Wikipedia describes Wild Heart as a step away from her traditional smooth jazz style toward a more rock and roll sound, and AllMusic says her sound spans pop, R&B, blues and funk under one jazz-saxophone umbrella, with In Hi-Fi Stereo an album-length tribute to soul-jazz. Her jazz credentials are real but sit at the edges of that output: a Berklee degree in woodwind performance, the Florida All-State Jazz Band chair, a No. 1 on Billboard's Jazz Albums chart, and an alto saxophone chair on the Karrin Allyson Sextet's 2019 album Shoulder to Shoulder. AllMusic's profile of her cites "21st Century Sophistication, A Gritty, Raucous Spirit," and the second half of that phrase is the part her touring years with Teena Marie, the Backstreet Boys and Aerosmith explain. Fellow smooth jazz horn players Dave Koz and Gerald Albright, with whom she recorded Summer Horns, share her radio-and-festival lane, while her work with Aerosmith, Joe Bonamassa and Keb' Mo' shows where she has taken that lane outside jazz.