Eliane Elias was born in São Paulo, Brazil, on March 19, 1960. Her mother, Lucy, was a classical pianist who often played jazz records at home. Elias began piano at seven, was transcribing jazz solos by twelve, and as a teenager studied and then taught piano and improvisation at the Free Center of Music Apprenticeship (CLAM) in São Paulo; her teachers included the pianists Amilton Godoy and Amaral Vieira. She was working professionally at seventeen, with the singer-songwriter Toquinho and the poet and lyricist Vinicius de Moraes.

In 1981, touring in Europe, she met the bassist Eddie Gomez, who urged her to come to New York. She moved there, studied at the Juilliard School, and in 1982 joined Steps Ahead, the electric band built around vibraphonist Mike Mainieri with saxophonist Michael Brecker, drummer Peter Erskine and Gomez. She is on the group's self-titled 1983 album for Elektra Musician and left soon afterward. She then began working with the trumpeter Randy Brecker; they married, and their daughter, the singer Amanda Elias Brecker, was born in 1984. Their duo album Amanda (Passport Jazz, 1985), recorded in February and May of that year, was dedicated to her, and the marriage later ended.

From 1986 Elias led her own groups, alternating, according to AllMusic, between a trio with drummer Jack DeJohnette and Gomez and another with Erskine and bassist Marc Johnson. Her first two albums under her own name were made for the Japanese label Denon: Illusions, recorded in New York on October 22 to 24, 1986, with guests including Stanley Clarke, Steve Gadd, Al Foster and Toots Thielemans, and Cross Currents (1988). She signed with Blue Note in 1989 and released So Far So Close that year, followed in 1990 by Eliane Elias Plays Jobim, recorded in December 1989 with Gomez, DeJohnette and the percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, the first of two albums devoted to the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim, on which she sang as well as played.

Through the 1990s she moved between jazz, Brazilian music and the classical repertoire. Fantasia (1992) used vocal guests including her daughter Amanda and Ivan Lins. In 1993 she released the jazz album Paulistana and, for EMI Classics, On the Classical Side, a program of Villa-Lobos, Ravel, Bach and Chopin; AllMusic counts her among the first artists to issue jazz and classical albums at the same time. Solos and Duets (Blue Note, 1995), recorded with Herbie Hancock, brought a Grammy nomination for the track "The Way You Look Tonight." The Three Americas (1997), mostly her own compositions, set out to combine rhythms from North, Central and South America, and Impulsive! (Stunt, 1997) paired her with Bob Brookmeyer and the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra in Brookmeyer's arrangements of her music, earning a Grammy nomination in the large-ensemble category. She also recorded with Toots Thielemans's Brasil Project (1992 and 1993) and, per AllMusic, served as musical director of Gilberto Gil's group. In 1999 she married Marc Johnson, who has played bass in her bands and has co-produced many of her records since.

In 2002 she left Blue Note for RCA's Bluebird label, where she made Kissed by Nature (2002), Dreamer (2004) and Around the City (2006), vocal-led albums, the last of which moved toward pop. Dreamer, with an orchestra arranged by Rob Mathes and guests including Michael Brecker and Mike Mainieri, won a Gold Disc Award in Japan. She returned to Blue Note for Something for You: Eliane Elias Sings & Plays Bill Evans (2007), a trio date with Johnson, who had played with Evans, and drummer Joey Baron, and for Bossa Nova Stories (2009), recorded to mark the fiftieth anniversary of bossa nova. In 2010 she signed with Concord. Light My Fire (2011) included Gilberto Gil as a guest singer on three tracks, Swept Away (ECM, 2012) was a co-led quartet date with Johnson, the saxophonist Joe Lovano and Baron, and I Thought About You (2013) was a tribute to Chet Baker.

Made in Brazil (2015), recorded in São Paulo with orchestral parts recorded at Abbey Road, won the Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album at the 2016 ceremony, and Dance of Time (2017), with Toquinho, Randy Brecker and Mainieri among the guests, won the Latin Grammy for Best Latin Jazz/Jazz Album. She received the Edison Lifetime Achievement Award in the Netherlands in 2018. Music from Man of La Mancha, recorded in 1995 for the composer Mitch Leigh and shelved for contractual reasons, was issued by Concord in 2018, and the orchestral Love Stories followed in 2019. Moving to the Candid label, she recorded Mirror Mirror (2021), piano duets with Chick Corea, who died in February 2021, and Chucho Valdés; it won a Grammy and a Latin Grammy in 2022. Quietude (2022) returned to bossa nova, and Time and Again (2024), recorded in São Paulo with guests including Djavan and Bill Frisell, was nominated for the 2025 Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album. Her live album Ao Vivo (Candid), recorded on October 21, 2023, at SFJAZZ in San Francisco with Johnson, guitarist Leandro Pellegrino and drummer Rafael Barata, came out on May 22, 2026, and she was still performing in 2026.

Elias joins a classical piano education to the harmonic language of modern jazz and the rhythms of her native Brazil; AllMusic describes her playing as a meeting of classical tradition, jazz spontaneity and Brazilian popular song. She is a pianist who also sings, in a soft, slightly husky voice that she has brought to her records alongside the piano since the early 1990s and that became the main attraction of the Bluebird albums, and she writes and arranges much of her own material. Her tribute albums name her models: Antonio Carlos Jobim on two albums, Bill Evans on Something for You, and Chet Baker on I Thought About You, and her bossa nova and samba programs draw as much on Brazilian songwriters such as Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes as on the American songbook. Working with Marc Johnson and the producer Steve Rodby, she has built a recording style that places sparse small-group jazz next to full orchestral settings by Rob Mathes. DownBeat gave Love Stories and Mirror Mirror five stars, and Marc Myers of JazzWax has called her one of the strongest jazz pianists touring and recording today.