She was born Arielle Laure Maxime Sonnery in Norwich, Connecticut, the daughter of Jean-Louis Melchior Sonnery de Fromental, a silk manufacturer, and Francion Garreau-Dombasle. She descends from French-American immigrants in Mexico under her grandfather's diplomatic tenure. The family's surname was created in 1912, when Dombasle's grandfather René Sonnery (1887–1925), an industrialist from Lyon, married Anne-Marie Berthon du Fromental. Arielle took the pseudonym Arielle Dombasle in memory of her mother who died at the age of 36. She was raised as a Roman Catholic.

Dombasle and her brother Gilbert were raised in Mexico by their maternal grandparents after their mother's death in 1964. She attended the Lycée Franco-Mexicain. She was also raised at Château de Chaintré, the Sonnery family estate near Mâcon, Saône-et-Loire. Her maternal grandfather, Maurice Garreau-Dombasle, was a close friend of and advisor to Charles de Gaulle and served as the French ambassador to Mexico. Her maternal grandmother was Man'ha Garreau-Dombasle (née Germaine Massenet, 1898–1999), a Writer and poet who translated Rabindranath Tagore's works into French and was a longtime friend of the science fiction Writer Ray Bradbury, who dedicated his 1972 novel The Halloween Tree to her.

Dombasle is the third wife of French Philosopher and Writer Bernard-Henri Lévy. They got married on June 19, 1993 at Saint-Paul-de-Vence on the Côte d'Azur where they have a villa. She has two stepchildren, Antonin-Balthazar Lévy and Justine Lévy, a Novelist. She was previously married to Dr. Paul Albou, described by Vanity Fair as a "playboy society dentist, 32 years her senior."

In 2006, she released both albums Amor Amor and C'est si Bon in the USA. In September 2006, she also performed three nights in a row at the Supper Club in New York City in front of Michael Douglas, John Malkovich, Lauren Bacall, Salman Rushdie, Andrée Putman and Charlie Rose. The latter invited Arielle Dombasle to promote her albums on The Charlie Rose Show.

Dombasle is vegetarian. In 2016, she campaigned against abattoirs for PETA.