[8] After meeting Jean-Luc Lagardère in 1990, Dati entered the audit management team of Matra Nortel communication.

In 1994, she was an auditing supervisor and secretary-general of the bureau of urban development studies at Suez (then Lyonnaise des Eaux).

[9] In 1997, following the advice of Simone Veil and Albin Chalandon, Dati joined and was admitted to the École nationale de la magistrature, a public educational institution which offers courses necessary to become a magistrate.

On 14 January 2007, she was named spokesperson for Sarkozy on the day he was chosen as UMP candidate for the presidential elections of April 2007.

After Sarkozy's victory on 6 May 2007, she was appointed Minister of Justice, making her the first political figure born to North African immigrant parents to occupy a sovereign ministry in a French government.

[17] She sits on the editorial board of the French version of the Huffington Post, where she writes a weekly column about women's issues.

[18] A member of the European People's Party group in the European Parliament,[19] Dati served on the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs and the parliament's delegations for relations with the Mashreq countries, to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean, and for relations with the Arab Peninsula.

[21] Her parliamentary work also included dealing with the prison systems and conditions in the European Union, and finding solutions to face the migration crisis with an EU common list of safe countries of origin.

[25] On 9 February 2013, Dati announced she was a candidate for mayor of Paris in the 2014 local elections but she later withdrew because "the press has already chosen Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet".

[27] On 11 January 2024, Dati made a surprise comeback to national politics, being nominated as Minister of Culture in the government of Gabriel Attal.

In early 2014, the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz asked parliamentary services to look into conflict-of-interest concerns, but the inquiry was interrupted by the 2014 election campaign.

At the same time, the independent French administrative authority HATVP, France's anti-corruption watchdog, also opened a file on the case.

[37] In August 2021, Dati was charged by France's financial crime unit with passive corruption and benefiting from abuse of power.

[44][45] However, in 2012, she started legal action against Dominique Desseigne, the chief executive of Groupe Lucien Barrière, a casino market leader in France, Switzerland and Europe, in order to establish the paternity of her child.

[46][47][48] In December 2012, a French court ordered Desseigne to undergo a paternity test to see if he fathered Dati's child.