Elizabeth Bonnin was born on 16 September 1976 in Paris, France, to a Trinidadian mother of Indian and Portuguese descent and a French-Martiniquan father, who was a dentist. Her family moved to Ireland when she was nine years old. Having had the chance to immerse herself in nature from an early age, she was especially interested in biology and chemistry at school. She grew up with her older sister, Bennin.

She studied biochemistry at Trinity College Dublin and later completed a Masters in wild animal biology with the Royal Veterinary College and Zoological Society of London, during which she set up a research project to study tigers in Nepal, coming first in her class.

She has explored marine mammal behaviour for the BAFTA Award-winning Big Blue Live on BBC One and PBS, assisted conservationists in the Russian Far East in the fight to save the last remaining Amur tigers for BBC Two, and investigated the impact of plastic pollution in Drowning in Plastic for BBC One.

In 2020, she became the first female president of The Wildlife Trusts and was recently awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the British Science Association. Her mother passed away in 2020 due to COVID-19. Bonnin remains private about her current personal life and lives in the United Kingdom.