Lorna Selim received a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Fine Arts, London, where she received a diploma in painting and design in 1948. The following year she received an Art Teachers' Diploma (ATD) from the London University Institute of Education. From 1949-50 she taught art at the Tapton House Grammar School, Chesterfield, England.

In the UK, she met Jewad Selim and they married in 1950. Returning to Baghdad, Lorna Selim became a member of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, Art Friends Society, and Society of Iraqi Plastic Artists. During the 1950s, she exhibited her work with the Baghdad Modern Art Group and the Pioneers Group. She was an art teacher at Ta'ssisiya School, Baghdad, in 1951, and participated in the Iraqi Pavilion Design for the International Fair held in Damascus in 1954.

Along with Mohamed Ghani Hikmet, she supervised the completion of Jewad Selim's Monument of Freedom after his sudden death in 1961. She taught drawing and painting at the Girls College in 1961, and the architecture department of the Engineering College, Baghdad University, in 1965. She lives and works in Abergavenny, Wales. Her work is held in collections including Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha.