She usually sang in Hassaniya, an Arabic variant spoken mostly in Western Sahara and Mauritania, occasionally singing in Saharan Spanish.

In 1975, following the Green March and the Madrid Accords which ceded the territory to Morocco and Mauritania, she went with her family, first to Meharrize and finally to the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria, where she worked as nurse.

[4] In 1998, Shadid El Uali disbanded, and Hassan started her solo career with a pair of songs on the album Sahrauis: The Music of the Western Sahara (A pesar de las heridas), released by the Spanish label Nubenegra.

[2] In 2004, she contributed to the album Medej, followed by extensive touring in Europe (Barcelona, Madrid, Leipzig, Helsinki, Brussels, Zurich, Antwerp).

[13][14][15] In June, she played with her band in Chiasso[16] Her album El Aaiun Egdat reached from the start a number 1 in the World Music Charts Europe in July 2012.

[18] In 2013 Mariem Hassan completed both a Sahrawi oral history project, Cuéntame Abuelo – Música,[19] and a tour to promote the album El Aaiun Egdat.

[24] In 2017 Manuel Domínguez and Zazie Schubert-Wurr published their adventures with Mariem Hassan in her concert tours for 18 years.

Hassan died of bone cancer in the Sahrawi refugee camps of Tindouf province, Algeria on 22 August 2015.

[1][2][3] Among her works is the Spanish language song "Tus ojos lloran" ("Your eyes weep"), dealing with her personal experience of a woman coping with the sufferings of life and bereavement (the deaths of her father and two of her brothers).