Elle was born on the North Sea coast of Lincolnshire where she taught herself to play the fiddle (and ride Gypsy horses on the beach ~ altho that's another story). She was raised amongst folk singers and wrote songs from an early age.

Elle’s debut album, Testimony (9th House Records, 2000), featured in the fRoots magazine Best of Year Critics’ Poll, and was reviewed as “…One of the most compelling performances of the year”.

Her 2011 release So Slowly Slowly Got She Up (Folk Police Recordings) was Album of the Week in The Independent, and gained Elle a nomination for Singer of the Year from Spiral Earth.

Elle's 2015 album, It's Not Your Gold Shall Me Entice, was her first full-length record of self-written songs, reviewed by Folk Radio UK, "With songwriting like this it is hard to believe that it has taken Osborne so long to begin committing her own material to tape. We can only hope she doesn’t stop there".

It's Not Your Gold... was followed by If You See a Rook On Its Own, It's a Crow (9th House Records 2020), strengthening Elle's reputation for fine lyric-writing, which had Bright Young Folk declaring "If this isn’t on the Folk Awards Best Album shortlist next year, they may as well scrap the whole event", and Folk Radio UK simply calling it "A bona fide masterpiece".

Elle features on the Shirley Collins tribute album, Shirley Inspired (Earth recordings 2015) singing the Ballad of Alain Bain, as well as appearing in the 2018 documentary The Ballad of Shirley Collins, and playing on Shirley's 2016 album Lodestar.

Elle also appears on the Peter Bellamy tribute album, Oak, Ash, Thorn (Folk Police Recordings 2011), singing The Way Through the Woods - reviewed by Living Tradition as "...The track that most brought Peter Bellamy’s spirit to mind...". And she sang Song for Thirza on the Lal Waterson tribute album Migrating Bird, as one half of the experimental folk noise duo Lindsey Woolsey (“Willful dissonance”! The Times).

Elle also composes for dance, and makes sound installations - including LongLines for the National Fishing Heritage Museum, Brigg Fair, Dark Nights celebrating 800 years of the Lincolnshire Gypsy horse fair, and Stand Apart at Fabrica gallery, Brighton.

Elle has toured Britain, Australia, and the USA, and has shared stages, songs, and sandwiches with James Yorkston, Spiers & Boden (the Bellowhead boyz), and Alasdair Roberts, amongst many others.