Elisa Badenes was born in Valencia, Spain. She attended the Conservatorio Profesional de Danza de Valencia. At the Prix de Lausanne in 2008 she won a scholarship for the Royal Ballet School from which she graduated one year later. In the 2009/10 season Elisa Badenes joined the Stuttgart Ballet as an apprentice, in 2010/11 she was taken into the Corps de ballet. She was promoted to Principal Dancer in 2013/14.

Her repertory includes a wide range of leading and solo roles including Odette/Odile in Swan Lake (John Cranko), Giselle (after Jean Coralli, Jules Perrot, Marius Petipa), Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Tatiana in Onegin and Katharina in The Taming of the Shrew (all John Cranko), Lise in La fille mal gardée (Frederick Ashton), Kitri in Don Quixote (Maximiliano Guerra after Petipa), Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty (Marcia Haydée), Desdemona in Othello and Stella in A Streetcar named Desire (both by John Neumeier) and Effi in La Sylphide (Peter Schaufuss after August Bournonville). In addition, she has danced solo roles in ballets by Jerome Robbins, George Balanchine, Kenneth MacMillan, Hans van Manen, Jiří Kylián, William Forsythe, Jorma Elo and Edward Clug. Choreographers such as Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Wayne McGregor, Mauro Bigonzetti, Christian Spuck, Marco Goecke, Demis Volpi and Louis Stiens have created roles for her. In 2016 Demis Volpi created the title role in his Salome for her.

Elisa Badenes has received several honors and prizes including the Gold medal of the Youth American Grand Prix, the Audience Choice Award of the Erik Bruhn Competition in Toronto in 2011 and the German Dance Prize Future in 2015. In Dance Europe's Critics' Choice 2020 she was named in the category "Outstanding Performance by a Female Dancer". In 2023 she was awarded “Dancer of the Year” by the “Dance Europe” magazine.

In December 2023 she was awarded the national title of "Kammertänzerin".