Heiress to the Italian tire manufacturing company CEAT founded in the 1920s by her grandfather Virginio Bruni Tedeschi and sold by her stepfather Alberto in the 1970s to Pirelli, she was born in Turin, Italy. The family moved to France in 1973, reportedly to escape the threat of kidnapping by the Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group active in Italy in the 1970s. Carla grew up in France from five and attended boarding school in Switzerland. She returned to Paris to study art and architecture, but left school at 19 to become a model. She signed with City Models. Paul Marciano, president and creative director of Guess? Inc., came across her picture among composite cards of aspiring models and chose her to model with Estelle Lefébure in campaigns for Guess? jeans. Bruni subsequently worked for designers and fashion houses such as Christian Dior, Givenchy, Paco Rabanne, Sonia Rykiel, Christian Lacroix, Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano, Yves Saint-Laurent, Chanel and Versace. By the 1990s, Bruni was among the 20 highest-paid fashion models, earning $7.5 million a year. While modeling, Bruni dated Eric Clapton Mick Jagger and Donald Trump

In 1997, Bruni quit the world of fashion to devote herself to music. She sent her lyrics to Julien Clerc in 1999, based on which he composed seven tracks on his 2000 album Si j'étais elle. In 2002, her debut album Quelqu'un m'a dit, produced by ex-lover Louis Bertignac, was released in Europe with success in Francophone countries. Three songs from the album appear in Hans Canosa's 2005 American film Conversations with Other Women. The song "Le plus beau du quartier" was used in H&M's Christmas 2006 commercial. In 2006, Bruni recorded "Those Little Things" an English-language translation of the Serge Gainsbourg song "Ces Petits Riens", for the tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited. She participated in the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in a parade paying tribute to the Italian flag. Her second album, No Promises containing poems by Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Auden, Dorothy Parker, Walter de la Mare, and Christina Rosetti, set to music, was released in January 2007.

Her music career still did not cease after becoming the First Lady. She will release her third album "Comme si de rien n'était" (As if nothing happened) on July 2008. The songs are self-penned except for one rendition of Bob Dylan's You Belong to Me and another song with poem of Michel Houellebecq set to music. Royalties from the album will be donated to unidentified charitable and humanitarian cause.