Born in Algiers,[1] Laïdi-Hanieh is the daughter of Ahmed Laïdi [fr], a senior Algerian civil servant and former ambassador to Spain, Jordan, the United Kingdom, and Mexico.

[6] In 1997, she initiated and led its transformation from a governmental center, created by the Palestinian Ministry of Culture in a renovated 1930s vernacular architecture mansion, into a non-governmental organization with a Board and a General assembly.

[citation needed] Laïdi-Hanieh focused on the development of the local visual arts scene and transition into conceptual and Contemporary Art by organizing tens of annual individual exhibitions for young artists, including from Gaza, organizing summer academies for young artists, and promoting their work via publishing regular exhibition catalogues.

[citation needed] The book featured original essays by Palestinian, European, Arab, and Japanese novelists, poets, and scholars, as well as art works and photography by Palestinian and European artists such as Mahmoud Darwish, Satoshi Ukai [ja], Francis Mertens, Mona Hatoum, Marc Trivier [fr], Jumana Emil Abboud, Mahmoud Shqeir, Mourid Barghouti, Hany Abu Assad, Jacques Sojcher [fr], Ahlam Shibli, John Berger, Faysal Darraj, and others.

[citation needed] She completed her PhD at George Mason University in 2015, focusing her dissertation and her subsequent postdoctoral fellowship from the Arab Council for the Social Sciences on contemporary Palestinian cultural practices: literature, visual arts, and cinema.

[18][24] In preparation for the Fahrelnissa Zeid retrospectives slated for 2017 at the Tate Modern and the Deutsche Bank Kunst Halle [de],[25] Adila Laïdi-Hanieh obtained from the artist’s family access to her private papers, in 2016 to write her biography.

It provides a revisionist and definitive account of both her life and the innovation and reinvention that characterized her career in Istanbul, London, and Paris, until her final decades working and teaching in Jordan.

[26] It redefines Fahrelnissa Zeid as an important modernist of the twentieth century by emphasizing her knowledge of European culture, evolving mental state, and challenging orientalist interpretations of her art.

Harper's Bazaar Arabia noted the book's "elegance, careful research, and its redefinition of Zeid as a prominent modernist painter".