Daughter of a valet and copyist for the composer Franz Joseph Haydn, she studied under Jean-Pierre Aumer and made childhood appearances at the Kärntnerthor Theatre with her sister Theresa, also a dancer. Engagements in Naples, Berlin, and London brought her international fame. After three months of intensive study with Auguste Vestris, she made her Paris Opéra debut in 1834 in Jean Co-alli's ballet La Tempête, derived from William Shakespeare's The Tempest. Her immediate success divided Parisian balletomanes into two camps, since the warmth and spontaneity of her dancing was in marked contrast to the ethereal lightness of her greatest rival, Marie Taglioni (Taglioni, Marie). Théophile Gautier called Elssler “the Spaniard from the north.” In La Gypsy (1839), made famous by her performance of the cracovienne, a Polish folk dance, and in La Tarentule (1839), she revealed extraordinary pantomimic ability. Her sensational success in Le Diable boiteux (1836), in which she introduced the Spanish cachucha, challenged Taglioni's supremacy. To unseat her rival, still called the greatest classical ballerina, she made one attempt in Taglioni's favourite ballet, La Sylphide; the endeavour was most unsuccessful, since she lacked Taglioni's lightness and elevation.

Between 1840 and 1842 Elssler toured the United States, winning extravagant adulation and earning enormous sums. She had broken her contract with the Paris Opéra in order to extend her American tour and could not return there, but she danced with continuing success in England, Germany, Italy, and Russia until her retirement in 1851.