Elena Ten was born in Moscow and received piano lessons at the "Central Music School of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory". From 1996 to 2003 she studied concert piano at the "Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory" in the class of Naum Starkman. In 2001 she graduated with honors and in 2003 she completed the postgraduate course. She is a laureate of piano competitions in Italy, Sweden and Russia.

As a repetiteur she worked at the "Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory" from 2004 to 2015 in the horn, trombone and tuba majors and in the conducting department, and from 2010 to 2015 at the "Central Music School of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory" in the horn, bassoon and tuba majors. She served as a répétiteur at the International Summer Academy of the University Mozarteum Salzburg in 2015 (Igor Petruschevsky, violin), 2018 (Michaela Girardi, violin; Johannes Hinterholzer, horn), 2019 (Johannes Hinterholzer, horn; Barnabas Kelemen, violin), and 2022 (Wally Hase, flute).

Since 2015 she has been répétiteur of the conducting class, and since 2021 of the trombone classes at the University Mozarteum Salzburg. Since 2017 she has been a teacher of piano and repetition in the violin, trumpet, trombone, cello and clarinet major classes at Gustav Mahler Private University in Klagenfurt. She also performs chamber music with piano duo, strings and wind instruments.