Roberta Gambarini was born on November 30, 1964, in Turin, in Italy's Piedmont region. Her father played saxophone, and she grew up hearing jazz records and attending concerts and festivals with her parents. She took up clarinet at 12, then moved to piano and singing, performing in clubs around northern Italy by the time she was 17. At 18 she moved to Milan to pursue a singing career, working in Italian radio and television while building a parallel career as a jazz vocalist.

Her earliest Discogs-documented recordings date from this Milan period: a 1986 appearance alongside the Italian Vocal Ensemble on Fabio Jegher's Chiaroscuri, the ensemble's own The Razor's Edge (1988), and in 1989 a vocal feature, alongside guitarist Bruno De Filippi, on pianist Guido Manusardi's Jazzt In Time. That same year she sang on composer Dino Betti van der Noot's large-ensemble album Space Blossoms, soloing on three tracks alongside an unusual roster of visiting American musicians: pianist Paul Bley, drummer Paul Motian and bassist Steve Swallow. In 1991 she co-led her own session, Apreslude, with saxophonist Antonio Scarano, both for the Milan label Splasc(h) Records.

In 1998 Gambarini moved to the United States and won a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Within weeks of arriving she entered the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals Competition, placing third behind Teri Thornton and Jane Monheit. The following year she met Benny Carter, who introduced her to the New York jazz community, and tenor saxophonist James Moody became her mentor, teacher and friend; Moody went on to guest on two of her own albums and she, in turn, sang on his 2008 quartet date with Hank Jones, released as Our Delight.

Gambarini's American debut as a leader, Easy to Love (2006, Groovin' High), paired her with two rhythm sections built around bassists Chuck Berghofer and John Clayton, drummers Joe La Barbera and Willie Jones III, and pianists Tamir Hendelman and Gerald Clayton, with Moody guesting on tenor saxophone and vocals; it was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2007. In 2007 she recorded You Are There, a duo album with pianist Hank Jones, one of the last studio collaborations of Jones's long career. Her 2009 album So in Love co-billed her with Moody and trumpeter Roy Hargrove and earned her a second Grammy nomination; the same year she sang on Hargrove's own big-band album Emergence. She was named Female Jazz Singer of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association in both 2007 and 2009.

Later albums moved across a wider range of settings and collaborators: Under Italian Skies (2009), a duo record with Italian bassist and composer Andrea Donati; The Shadow of Your Smile: Homage to Japan (2013, Groovin' High/55 Records), with pianist George Cables, saxophonist Justin Robinson, bassist John Webber and drummer Victor Lewis; Connecting Spirits (2015), recorded with tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath and the Heath Brothers Band as a songbook tribute to Heath's own compositions; and Dedications: Roberta Gambarini Honors Ella, Sarah & Carmen (2019, 55 Records), a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae. In 2026 she recorded Blues Porteño (Love Letters from Buenos Aires) with Argentine pianist Pablo Ziegler, a tango-jazz collaboration for In+Out Records, her most recent release to date. In 2023 the French Ministry of Culture named her a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. She continues to perform and record from a base in New York.

Gambarini's singing is rooted in the bebop and swing vocal tradition rather than in contemporary pop-jazz crossover: her clarinet training as a child is often cited by critics as the source of the horn-like phrasing and scat improvisation that run through her recorded work, and her catalog is built largely from the Great American Songbook rather than original compositions. Her closest working relationships were with musicians from the generation she grew up admiring on record, Benny Carter, James Moody and Hank Jones among them, which places her squarely in a direct lineage with mid-century American jazz rather than at its margins. Dedications (2019) makes that lineage explicit, built entirely around the vocal styles of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae, while her 2026 pairing with Pablo Ziegler shows a later willingness to work outside the straight-ahead jazz-vocal format, into tango-inflected material.