Born Nina Kakkar in Bonn, she is the daughter of an Indian diplomat. He is the son of the former Arsenal director Sir Guy Bracewell-Smith, 2nd Baronet, who was on the Arsenal board of directors from May 1953 to September 1976. Sir Guy was in turn the son of the former Arsenal director Sir Bracewell Smith, 1st Baronet, who was chairman from 1948 to 1962.
She was a major shareholder and former non-executive director of the Premier League football club Arsenal. As of September 2007, Lady Bracewell-Smith owned a 15.9% stake in the club and was the third largest shareholder in the club following Danny Fiszman, with 24.11%, and Red and White Holdings, which is co-owned by Farhad Moshiri and Alisher Usmanov, which owns 24.0% of the equity. On 17 December 2008 Arsenal Holdings Public Limited Company made this announcement: "Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith will be leaving the Boards of the Company and the Club with immediate effect."
On 11 April 2011, she sold her Arsenal shares amounting to 15.9% of club"s stake to Stan Kroenke.
On 1 March 2012, she was appointed Honorary Vice-President of the Club.
Lady Bracewell-Smith was also formerly a director of the Park Lane Sheraton Hotel. The Bracewell-Smith family has strong connections to hotels having previously owned the Ritz Hotel in London, which they sold in 1976, together with a large share of the Paris Ritz.
They also held the majority of the shares in the Park Lane Hotel (built by Sir Bracewell Smith in 1920) until its £44m sale in 1996. She is also 44th on The Sunday Times United Kingdom Asian rich list, 72nd on the women list and is in the European Rich List.
