Najla Bouden was born in 1958 in Dar Chaabane El-Fehri and was raised in Kairouan, She is an engineer by profession and a professor of higher education at the National Engineering School of Tunis at Tunis El Manar University, having specialized in geosciences.
 She has a Ph.D. from the École des Mines de Paris in earthquake engineering. Her work has focused on seismic hazards in Tunis.

Before her current position as Prime Minister, she had held senior roles at the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, including as part of the $70 million World Bank-funded program "PromEssE" to reform and "modernize" university education in order to help alleviate widespread unemployment among Tunisian graduates, a major social issue in the country.

On 29 September 2021, President Kais Saied asked Bouden to form and lead a government quickly, the first time in the country's history that a woman reached the office of prime minister.
 At their meeting at the presidential palace, which was broadcast by the president's office, Saied described the news as "an honor to Tunisia and Tunisian women".
She is expected to take over as prime minister with fewer executive powers than her predecessors, as the president has assumed full executive powers.
 Samir Dilou, a former government minister and spokesperson, said that Bouden's nomination was illegal because it was done through Saied's presidential decrees while Tunisian analyst Salah Ad-din Al-jourshi suggests that Saied's "trust that Bouden will be loyal to him was a factor encouraging his decision" as, he claims, was her distance from political parties, especially Tunisia's main opposition party, Ennahda.

Bouden is also an Officer of the National Order of Merit of Tunisia (2016)