Eliane Aberdam was born in Nancy, France. As a child, she studied the piano, solfege and harmony at the Conservatoire National de Region in Grenoble. She did her undergraduate studies in composition at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem where her composition teacher was Mark Kopytman. She spent eight years in Jerusalem where she became very familiar with Mediterranean and Middle Eastern traditional music styles, listening to local radio stations, hearing music in the streets at festive ceremonies and cultural events. While studying in Jerusalem, she had the opportunity to study Music in the Islam World with renowned musicologist Amnon Shiloah.

In 1989, she entered the graduate program at the University of Pennsylvania where she studied with George Crumb and obtained her MMus in Composition in 1992. She completed her Ph.D. in Composition at U.C. Berkeley. In 1998-1999, she taught composition, theory and Music technology at the University of Northern Iowa. Her works are performed in Israel, Europe and the United States. She attended music festivals such as The Bartok Seminar in Hungary, June in Buffalo, the Académie d' Été in Paris, and Voix Nouvelles in Royaumont (France). In 1995, she was selected by IRCAM for the Annual Course in electronic music, and the commission of "PaRDeS", an electro-acoustic work for chamber ensemble and electronics. In 2000, the Ensemble InterContemporain (Paris) commissioned and premiered the chamber orchestra piece "Quoi? Ce point". Her Grisailles Vaporeuses piano trio was performed by Trio Casals at Carnegie Hall in February 2020 and by the Kingston Chamber Music Festival (2018) among others.

She has written three operatic works: Tamar and Shahrazad are about domestic violence, and In Our Own Words is about interracial adoption. Eliane Aberdam is inspired by topics such as climate change, social and racial injustices. She recently completed a chorus piece “Deleth” (Door) about the plight of refugees (based on texts written by refugees/asylum seekers) and is currently gathering materials for an “Operatorio” about the victims of shipwrecks in the Mozambique Channel (based on texts and testimonials of survivors and relatives of victims). She has just finished a Cantique in remembrance of her late father, and a violin concerto “In Memoriam” in remembrance of the civilians and soldiers fallen in the Ukrainian war that premiered in Kyiv on June 23, 2023.

She has just completed a guitar solo piece in four movements for the Rhode Island Guitar Festival, and it is performed today for the second time. Other future projects include an electro-acoustic piece with the program MAX/MSP (an homage to the victims of police brutality and domestic violence), a 60-minute operetta for two singers, actresses, harp, violin and bassoon to accompany a French children’s story, and a commission by the Kingston Chamber Music Festival for the 2024 Season. Eliane Aberdam has been teaching composition and theory at the University of Rhode Island since 2001.