[3] Due to the unhappy marriage and an abusive relationship between her parents, Hassan's mother left the camp shortly after her birth and managed to immigrate to France, where she reunited with one of her sisters.

[4] As soon as she reached the age of majority, she sought to travel to Palestine via Tel Aviv, intending to "finally discover the land of her ancestors", but she was prevented from boarding at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

[3] Hassan joined the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) in 2016,[9] and after 18 months, she worked at the National Court of Asylum Law[4][14] for six years until 2023.

[22] Following the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, amid the bombing of the Gaza Strip and the ground offensive launched by Israel, she terminated her contract with the National Court of Asylum Law and declined an advocacy position on migration issues offered by Amnesty International.

Instead, she moved back to the Neirab refugee camp, "to be close to her people" and established the Action Palestine France collective on Telegram.

[23] In August 2023, Hassan participated in the summer days organized by The Ecologists, alongside the rapper Médine or the politician Clémentine Autain.

[31] In September 2020, she intervened within a collective and associations to call on the French government and local elected officials to mobilize to welcome refugees and thus help improve the humanitarian situation in the Mória camp in Greece.

[42][39] In January 2024, this nomination was contested by Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France ("Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions"; CRIF) who accused her of "justifying the atrocities of 7 October" by Hamas[43][44][45] and by the television presenter Arthur who accused her of "lauding terrorism".

[49][47] On 30 April 2024, Hassan was summoned by the police for lauding terrorism due to comments she made on social media in the winter of 2023; she claimed on that occasion that she was "serene" but then denounced "the political pressures aimed at compromising [her] freedom of expression [at] a crucial political moment for the future of the French", referring to the European elections that year.

[50] In May 2024, Hassan faced controversy for a message she posted on X (formerly Twitter) accusing the CRIF of having dictated to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Séjourné, a declaration concerning Israel.

The day after this proposal, fellow MEP François-Xavier Bellamy (The Republicans) used his connections to block her election to this position by accusing her of "antisemitism".

[51][52][b] Following these messages, Bellamy filed a complaint for "threats and incitement to commit a crime or offence against an elected official", believing that she had "named him for the vindictiveness of Islamist circles".

The President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, opened an investigation following Bellamy's complaint, suspecting Hassan of having breached the institution's code of conduct.

[51] On 22 August 2024, deputies from the presidential Renaissance party announced their intention to appeal to the public prosecutor to have Hassan's parliamentary immunity lifted for having participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Amman, Jordan.

"[54] On 23 January 2025, Rima Hassan opposed a transpartisan resolution in the European Parliament that called for the release of writer Boualem Sansal, who has been imprisoned since mid-November 2024 in Algeria.