Haruka Yabuno began playing piano at three years old, with improvisation part of her practice from the start, and built a classical foundation strong enough to earn distinctions in national competitions before attending Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo. There she transitioned into jazz studies under Makoto Ozone, Yosuke Yamashita, and Masahiro Sayama, graduating with the jazz department's highest honors and the Yosuke Yamashita Award. She also participated in a Hank Jones master class.

In 2010, on Ozone's recommendation, she received a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, majoring in Jazz Composition under pianists Ray Santisi, Alain Mallet, and Neil Olmstead, and studying composition with Greg Hopkins, Phil Wilson, and Scott Free. Her genre range showed early: in 2011 she performed with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Ernie Isley, and in 2012 she appeared with the Video Game Orchestra at Boston Symphony Hall.

She relocated to New York City in 2013, performing at venues including Jazz at the Kitano and Shapeshifter Lab. There she formed The Yabuno Ettun Project with Israeli bassist Ehud Ettun, releasing their debut album, BiPolar, in July 2014 — a genuinely cross-cultural collaboration between a Tokyo-conservatory-trained pianist and a bassist from an entirely separate jazz tradition.

Yabuno's training bridges rigorous Tokyo-conservatory classical and jazz foundations with the compositional discipline of Berklee's jazz composition program, and her New York-era work with Ehud Ettun reflects an active interest in cross-cultural collaboration rather than a single national jazz idiom.