Gurinder Chadha was born in Kenya but when she was two her family moved to Southall, London. She got a job as a BBC Radio reporter until she made a documentary for Channel 4 in 1989. Chadha moved into film production in 1993. She is married to filmmaker Paul Mayeda Berges, with whom she sometimes collaborates. They have twin babies.

Chadha is best known for her films Bhaji on the Beach (1993), Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Bride and Prejudice (2004).

In the 1980s she began making documentaries for the BBC, and in 1989 released "I'm English but..." for Channel 4, which followed the lives of young British Asians. In 1990, Chadha set up a production company, Umbi Films. Her first film was the 11-minute "Nice Arrangement" (1991) about a British Asian wedding.

She wrote the screenplay for The Mistress of Spices (based upon the novel of the same name by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni) with Berges, who directed the film.

In 2005 she appeared on the BBC show Your London, in which she told the story of a Sikh prince who lived in London in the 19th century. In 2006 she took part in the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? in which she traced her Sikh family roots back to Kenya and before that to India's Punjab.

The BBC has confirmed that Chadha will direct the forthcoming feature film adaptation of the popular TV series Dallas.

Chadha was awarded an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) on 17 June 2006.