Enders started racing in 1992 at the age of eight. Her original junior dragster car is preserved at the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum as a testament to her early days in the sport. In 1993 she won the Division 4 Junior Dragster championship in the eight-to-nine-year-old class, and in 1995 she was named Junior Dragster Driver of the Year. Over eight years of junior dragster competition she accumulated 37 career wins.
In 2000, at the age of sixteen, Enders advanced to her first national event final in Houston, becoming the youngest NHRA national event finalist at that time, and was named NHRA Sportsman Rookie of the Year. In 2004 she became the 35th woman in NHRA history to earn a national event victory, winning in the Super Gas class at Houston.
The year 2005 marked a series of historic achievements. Enders became the first woman to compete in the NHRA's Pro Stock category since 1993, the first woman in NHRA history to qualify in the top half of a Pro Stock field, and the first woman to reach a final round in Pro Stock at Chicago. She achieved more round wins that year than all other female drivers in NHRA Pro Stock history combined and was a finalist for the season's top rookie award.
In 2006 she became the first woman to qualify number one in Pro Stock, doing so at Heartland Park in Topeka, Kansas, and recorded a runner-up finish at the Gatornationals in Gainesville, Florida.
After returning to Cagnazzi Racing in 2011, Enders broke the national speed record in Pro Stock at 213.57 mph at the Gainesville round. On July 2, 2012, she became the first woman ever to win an NHRA Pro Stock event, defeating four-time champion Greg Anderson in the final at Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Illinois, with a winning time of 6.627 seconds for the 1,320-foot run. She finished that season a career-best fourth in points during the Countdown to the Championship.
Following the 2013 season, Enders joined Elite Motorsports to drive the team's new Camaro for the 2014 season. That year she became the first woman to win the NHRA Pro Stock World Championship, claiming six race victories including the season-ending Auto Club NHRA Finals. She also set both sides of the NHRA National Record for Pro Stock in 2014 at Englishtown, New Jersey — 6.464 seconds and 215.55 mph.
In 2015, Enders defended her championship to claim back-to-back Pro Stock World titles. At Charlotte's zMax Dragway in September 2015, she scored her 19th career win, surpassing a record for most NHRA national event wins by a female driver previously held by Shirley Muldowney in Top Fuel. Later that October at the Texas Motorplex, her eighth win of the season broke Pro Stock Motorcycle rider Angelle Sampey's single-season record of seven wins set in 2001.
In 2018, Enders expanded into the Pro Modified class for Elite Motorsports, driving a twin-turbocharged 2019 Chevrolet Camaro. She set the class record for fastest speed at 261 mph. In 2019, she narrowly escaped serious injury when her Camaro caught fire at the end of a qualifying run in Ohio in the Pro Mod class.
Enders and her sister Courtney both attended Cypress Springs High School in the Houston area, with Courtney also having competed in junior dragster racing. In 2003, the two sisters had their life story adapted into a Disney Channel Original Movie, Right on Track, in which Erica was portrayed by Beverley Mitchell and Courtney by Brie Larson. Enders married longtime boyfriend Richie Stevens Jr., himself a drag racer, on December 7, 2012, following his trackside proposal after her first Pro Stock national event win.
Erica Enders transformed the landscape of NHRA Pro Stock, dismantling long-standing gender barriers with each successive record and title. Her six world championships stand as a benchmark not just for women in the sport but for any driver in the modern era of Pro Stock competition. Through Elite Motorsports she helped build a team that consistently competed at the front of the field, and her achievements in both Pro Stock and Pro Modified demonstrate a range that few drag racers of any era can match. Her story, from an eight-year-old at the starting line to the sport's most successful female champion, remains one of the defining narratives of contemporary NHRA racing.