Narbonne serves grades 9 through 12 and is part of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The school was named for Nathaniel A. Narbonne, a sheep rancher, who owned most of the land in the Lomita and Harbor City area.

The original building, from when Narbonne covered 7th through 12 grades, is in Lomita, and is now Alexander Fleming Middle School.

In 1957, the new school was built on the present site at 242nd Place and Western Avenue.

[2] The incident is referred to in the track "The Last Stand of Shazeb Andleeb" on the 1996 album The Cult of Ray by Black Francis, who attended Narbonne in the early 1980s.