The daughter of a cleaning lady and a workshop manager,[4] a graduate of the École Nationale de Commerce, and an executive assistant,[5][6] she was elected mayor of Garges-lès-Gonesse in June 1995 and, three months later in September, senator (UMP) for Val-d'Oise.
A member of the Senate Delegation for Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities for Men and Women, she has held a number of local offices, including Regional Council of Île-de-France and vice-president of the Val-d'Oise General Council.
Between 1999 and 2004, she was chair of the parliamentary study group on the fight against drugs and drug addiction.[7]
In 2003, she was a member of the Stasi Commission on Secularism.
Minister Delegate for Combating Precariousness and Exclusion, then Minister Delegate for Integration, Equal Opportunities and Combating Exclusion in Jean-Pierre Raffarin's government (3), she became Ministry of Ecological Transition (France) and Sustainable Development in Dominique de Villepin's government on June 2, 2005, a position she may owe to her past work as a member of the National Noise Council.
On December 30, 2004, she created the French Equal Opportunities and Anti-Discrimination Commission.
On July 13, 2007, Nelly Olin resigned from her position as first deputy mayor of the municipality of Garges-lès-Gonesse.[8] On October 5, she decided to leave politics and announced her decision to her supporters in the UMP party in Garges.
From 2007 to 2015, she was involved in the Christophe Bridou case, a former municipal police officer who accused her of slanderous denunciation of pedophilia, which led to his dismissal in 2002.
Nelly Olin was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2008.[9]
She lived in Meulan-en-Yvelines, where the mayor, Cécile Zammit-Popescu, is her niece. She died on October 26, 2017, at her home after a long illness[10] and was buried in the cemetery in Garges-les-Gonesse.[11]
