Rambha was born as Vijayalakshmi in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh on 5 June 1978 into a Telugu family. Her mother tongue is Telugu. She did her schooling at Atkinsons Senior Secondary School, Vijayawada. While she was studying 7th std, for her school's Annual Day competition she acted as Amman for a song. It was director Hariharan who was the Chief guest of the school Annual day function, introduced her as a female lead in his movie Sargam. Her first on-screen name was Amrutha which she later changed as Rambha after the character name in her Telugu debut movie Aa Okkati Adakku.

Rambha is married to Indrakumar Pathmanathan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Magickwoods, a kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities manufacturing firm based in Toronto, Indyca Solutions (india) Private Limited and Indyca Exim Private Limited based in Kancheepuram. The Mehendi ceremony took place on April 7, 2010 at her residence in Saligramam, Chennai. She got married on 8 April 2010, at Karnataka Kalyana Mandapam in Tirumala and her wedding reception was on 11 April 2010 at Rani Meyyaiamma Hall, Chennai. The newly married couple went for honeymoon to Fiji and New Zealand. After marriage she got settled at North York, Toronto. She gave birth to a daughter, Laanya on 13 January 2011 and on 27 March 2015 she delivered another baby girl, Sasha. ^[12] She gave birth to both of her daughters at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto.^[13][14]

During July 2014, Rambha's sister-in-law booked a dowry harassment case against Rambha and her family for harassing her asking additional dowry.^[15] During May 2016, she came back to India with her daughters. She applied for a habeas corpus demanding 2.5 lakh Rupees money from her husband for maintenance of her daughters.^[16][17] Nearly a year after her return from Canada, with a hearing from Madras High Court, the couple decided to compromise and live together.^[18] After Rambha returned back to India, she was summoned to appear before the court regarding the dowry harassment case.^[19]

Rambha started her career with a Malayalam film Sargam opposite Vineeth. The same year she acted Telugu movie Aa Okkati Adakku opposite Rajendra Prasad. She again paired up with Vineeth in Champakulam Thachan. For the film Sargam, she has won State award and the film received a National Award.

In 1993, she completed the movie Tholi Muddhu opposite Prashanth after its original actress Divya Bharti died suddenly. Her second Tamil movie Ullathai Allitha, which remains her biggest hit till date, gave her a major breakthrough in her career. It was from this movie that she started doing glamorous roles which won her numerous fans. She then entered Bollywood and was paired up with popular heroes. She has had huge success in South Indian films from the mid 90s till early 2000s. People loved her glamour roles. She was popular for her volouptous beauty and she was nicknamed thodai azhagi by her fans as her thighs were famous for it's size and beauty which eventually became the USP of all her movies. She had very tough competition at that time with hugely popular heroines like Jyothika, Roja, Simran, Meena and Nagma. While approaching the mid 2000s, Rambha was no longer in demand like before as a new crop of young heroines started their reign in south Indian films. Rambha even tried her luck by getting more slimmer but her time was running out.

She started her career as a producer with help of her brother with the movie Three Roses in which Jyothika, Laila and Rambha played the lead characters. Unfortunately, the film failed at the box office despite Rambha going all out glamour for the film. She fell heavily into debt after failure of this movie at the box-office.^[20] She sold her house at Mount Road, Chennai inorder to pay the debt caused by the movie. Further she was also booked in a cheque-bounce case filed by the financiers of the movie.^[21]

Rambha has acted in several languages and always maintained a successful balance in Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Bhojpuri and Bengali. Her last film in Malayalam titled Paayum Puli in 2007 got good reviews and despite being in her mid 30s, she did one of her most glamorous roles for this film. Most of her movies are successful. In 2010, Rambha shot alongside Prakash Raj for a thriller film titled Vidiyum Varai Kathiru. The film was shot in three languages namely Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, but the film did not have a theatrical release.

After her marriage she had given up films and has judged a very popular Tamil TV show Maanada Mayilada, and the Telugu dance show Dhee.^[22] After a long gap she came back from Toronto, she appeared as a judge of Zee Telugu dance show ABCD-Anybody Can Dance and judged Kings of Comedy Juniors on Vijay TV.

She is a brand ambassador for Kolors health care, Chennai^[23] and also for her husband's firm based in Toronto.

As actress

In order of languages in which she acted the most to least number

Telugu

Tamil

Hindi

Malayalam

Kannada

Bhojpuri films

Bengali films