Florence Mumba was born in 1948 in Zambia. She earned her Bachelor of Laws Degree from the University of Zambia in 1972 and was called to the Bar in 1973 after completing her studies at the Law Practice Institute.

From 1973 to 1980, Florence worked as Legal Counsel for the Ministry of Justice in Zambia and the Department of Legal Aid. She made history by becoming the first woman to be appointed High Court Judge in Zambia in 1980. She served in this capacity for eight years after which she was appointed to the Office of Investigator General (Ombudsman) in 1989. She eventually became the Director of the International Ombudsman Institute Board and was elected Vice-President of the Board until 1996. A year after, she was appointed to the Supreme Court of Zambia. Judge Mumba’s international career begun with her joining the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, where she aided in the drafting of a resolution in 1992 to have rape considered a war crime. She further served as Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists from 1994 to 2003.

During this period, she participated in drafting the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on the establishment of the African Court of Justice in 1995. In 1997, Mumba was elected judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and served as Vice President of the tribunal from 1999 to 2001 and in the Appeals Chamber from 2003 to 2005. Furthermore, Jude Mumba was appointed to the African Union High Panel on Darfur in 2009 and later appointed Reserve Judge of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in the same year. Afterward, she was appointed as a full-time judge of the Supreme Court Chamber of the ECCC in 2012 where she currently continues to serve. Judge Mumba is recognized for playing an active role in introducing rape as a war crime as well as a crime against humanity in the statute of the ICTY which is linked to the first trial she presided over – The Furundžija case.