After studying history, Romance languages and literature, philosophy and education as part of a binational degree programme at the universities of Mainz and Dijon, she completed her doctorate in 2011 with a thesis on French cultural policy in Lebanon in the first half of the 20th century. She then worked as a research assistant at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz, where she led a research project on the history of humanitarian aid in the Arab world, funded by the German Research Foundation and the Gerda Henkel Foundation. For this project, she spent an extended research stay in Cairo in 2017 with the help of a postdoctoral fellowship from the Orient-Institut Beirut. She completed her habilitation at the University of Mainz in 2021 with a thesis on the Egyptian Red Crescent in the second half of the 20th century. From 2020 to 2022, Esther Möller held the Chair of Cultural History of North Africa at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich, where she was involved in setting up an interdisciplinary degree programme in Cultural Studies. In the academic year 2022-2023, she took up the Alfred Grosser Visiting Professorship at Sciences Po, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. On 1 October 2023, Esther Möller took over the position of Deputy Director from the German side at the Centre Marc Bloch.
Her research includes the history of relations between Europe and the Arab world, particularly in the areas of education, humanitarianism, migration and flight, the history of the Mediterranean region and the history of international organisations.