[3] The eldest of three children, she was discovered at a bus stop on her way home from school by an actor's agent, who cast her in her first television role in the series Viva Families in 1992, when she was 13 years old.

Mbuli went on to present various magazine programs for television including Teleschool, Zapmag, Technics Heart of the Beat and Limits Unlimited.

In 2001, she landed a lead role in the television soap opera Backstage, which was aimed at South African youth.

She completed a major role on Home Affairs, a thirteen-part series that interlinked the lives of five very different women, for Penguin Films.

In 2015, Mbuli starred opposite Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh as policewoman Grace Mthembu in the British series Wallander.