Elise Bean became counsel to U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), on the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in 1985. She worked for him on three subcommittees, under the leadership of Linda Gustitus. In 2003, Senator Levin appointed Ms. Bean as his staff director and chief counsel on the committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), the Senate’s premier investigative body.

During her PSI tenure, Ms. Bean handled a variety of investigations, hearings and legislation, including matters involving offshore tax abuses, money laundering, foreign corruption, unfair credit card practices, health care fraud, abuses involving derivatives and structured finance, and shell companies with hidden owners. Investigations headed by her included inquiries into the 2008 financial crisis, HSBC money laundering problems, London whale trades at JPMorgan Chase, collapse of Enron, and offshore tax avoidance by Apple, Microsoft and Caterpillar.

In early 2015, Senator Levin retired from the U.S. Senate, and so did Ms. Bean. In his honour, Ms. Bean and Ms. Gustitus helped establish the Levin Center at Wayne State University Law School in his hometown of Detroit. The mission of the nonprofit Levin Center is to promote bipartisan, fact-based oversight by elected legislators, good governance, and civil discourse on current issues of public policy. Ms. Bean and Ms. Gustitus serve as co-directors of the Levin Center’s Washington office.

In 2010, Ms. Bean was selected by the National Law Journal as one of Washington's most influential women lawyers. In 2011 and 2013, the Washingtonian magazine named her one of Washington's 100 most powerful women. In 2015 and 2016, she was included in the Global Tax 50, a list compiled by International Tax Review of the year's top 50 individuals and organizations influencing tax policy and practice. In 2017, Global Witness recognized her as a leader in tax justice issues.

Ms. Bean graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University in 1978, and earned her law degree, cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School in 1982. She served as a law clerk to the Chief Judge of the U.S. Claims Court and then worked for two years as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Frauds Section. Earlier in her career, she worked for U.S. Rep. John Joseph Moakley, D-Mass.

Her first book is Financial Exposure: Carl Levin’s Senate Investigations into Finance and Tax Abuse, which was published in August 2018.