At age six, she began playing violin at the Choisy-le-Roi conservatory,[4] and at ten, she got involved in theatre work.

[4] In 2016, she was cast in the lead role of the television film Ne m'abandonne pas, about a radicalized Muslim teenager.

[6] In 2017, she landed the lead role of Zahira Kazim in Stephan Streker's A Wedding (French: Noces), where she plays a young Belgian-Pakistani girl who is forced by her family into a traditional marriage.

El Arabi won the Valois award for best actress at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival.

[7] In 2019, El Arabi had a recurring role in the comedy series Family Business, which was distributed internationally by Netflix.