She born February 11, 1961, in Huntington, New York, Lowell grew up in Libya, Holland, Virginia, and Texas. A geologist's daughter, she was signed by the Ford modeling agency right out of high school. During college (she attended the University of Colorado for a year and then transferred to New York University) Lowell modeled for Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, but soon turned to acting.

Her first theater experience was with New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. In 1986, she made her film debut in Club Paradise and then Dangerously Close, and in 1987 she appeared in Downtwisted. Carey Lowell met her future husband, Griffin Dunne, while shooting Me and Him, a comedy, in 1988. In 1989 she was cast as the sixteenth "James Bond girl," the tough, confrontational CIA agent Pam Bouvier, opposite Timothy Dalton as Bond in Licence to Kill (1989).

Lowell's TV exposure has included the starring role of Dottie (the role originated by Geena Davisin the movie) in the short-lived comedy series A League of Their Own. In 1995, she made Fierce Creatures, the sequel to the hit comedy A Fish Called Wanda, directed by John Cleese and starring Kevin Kline Michael Palin, and Jamie Lee Curtis(released in 1997).

Carey Lowell was having trouble getting parts and decided to enroll at New York University summer school in 1996 to study documentary filmmaking. But her luck turned around, and on the first day of classes she had to withdraw from school to take the part of Assistant District Attorney Jamie Ross on the award-winning Law & Order. Lowell left Law & Order two years later, at the end of its eighth season, to spend more time with her daughter. Lowell is romantically linked with actor Richard Gere, with whom she has a son, Homer James Jigme Gere, born in February 2000.