Her parents fled Czechoslovakia to Lund, Sweden, to escape the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion. She was left in the care of her grandmother. Czechoslovak authorities would not allow her parents to reclaim her, and the ensuing battle was widely publicized in the Swedish press, making Porizkova a cause célèbre.
She quickly rose to become a top model in Paris during the early 1980s, and her fame spread to the United States when she posed in swimwear for Sports Illustrated. She appeared on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 1984 and again in 1985.
Porizkova was chosen twice by People as one of the Fifty Most Beautiful People in the world, in 1990 and 1992.
Porizkova is currently a blogger for Modelinia and The Huffington Post.