Amati was born in Rome to actress Anna Maria Pancani and theatre-chain owner Giovanni Amati, and grew up with a strong interest in cars and motorsport. At the age of 18, on 12 February 1978, she was kidnapped by three criminals led by a French national, Jean Daniel Nieto, who forcibly removed her from a car near her parents' villa in Rome. Amati was held captive for 75 days, kept in a wooden cage and subjected to physical and mental abuse, before her release on 27 April 1978. The ransom of 800 million lire — approximately $933,000 at the time — was raised by her family using box-office receipts from the film Star Wars, the sale of family jewellery, and money borrowed from the family's domestic staff, after Italian authorities had frozen kidnap victims' families' assets as an anti-crime measure.
Nieto was later arrested after police arranged a meeting with Amati. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison, escaped custody in 1989, and was rearrested in April 2010.
Amati attended a motor racing academy alongside her friend Elio de Angelis and began professional racing in the Formula Abarth series in 1981, winning several events over the next four years. She moved to Italian Formula Three in 1985–86, running successfully and scoring wins. In 1987 she graduated to the International Formula 3000 Championship, entering three rounds but qualifying only once, at Donington Park. She returned to F3000 in 1988 with a Lola chassis, recording a pair of tenth-place finishes at Monza and Jerez.
Amati moved to Japan in 1989 to race in the Super Formula Championship, without significant success. She returned to European Formula 3000 in 1990, changing teams three times across the season — from Roni Motorsports to Lola to Cobra Motorsports. That year she was involved in a testing accident at Brands Hatch with British driver Phil Andrews, resulting in minor injuries to both. In 1991, Amati joined GJ Motorsports for the full F3000 season, qualifying for six of the championship rounds and reaching several non-points top-ten positions. At the year's end she tested a Benetton Formula One car for the first time, completing 30 laps.
Amati signed with the Brabham Formula One team in January 1992 to partner Eric van de Poele. The team had been unable to secure their preferred driver, Japanese F3000 racer Akihiko Nakaya, who was denied a superlicence because the FIA did not recognise the Japanese F3000 series as a valid qualification pathway. Amati's signing made her the first female driver to enter a Formula One race since Desiré Wilson in 1980, attracting considerable media attention for the then-struggling Brabham operation.
At the opening round in South Africa, Amati spun six times during practice and failed to qualify, posting a time nine seconds slower than pole-sitter Nigel Mansell and four seconds behind van de Poele. She also failed to qualify in Mexico, more than ten seconds adrift of Mansell's benchmark. At the Brazilian Grand Prix, her third and final attempt, she and van de Poele were both excluded from the event after lapping respectively ten and six seconds slower than Mansell. Brabham terminated Amati's contract and replaced her with Damon Hill — the future 1996 World Champion — who himself failed to qualify for his first five attempts before making the grid at the 1992 British Grand Prix. As of 2025, Amati remains the last woman to have attempted to qualify a Formula One car.
Amati competed in the Porsche SuperCup in 1993, winning the Women's European Championship. From 1994 to 1996, she raced in the Ferrari Challenge series. After a sabbatical year in 1997, she returned in 1998 racing a Ferrari 355 and also entered endurance events including the Sebring 12 Hours — where she retired with clutch failure — and made a finish at a Le Mans two-hour race. In 1999, she competed in the SportsRacing World Cup, finishing third in the SR2 class.
Following her retirement from active competition, Amati worked as a sport commentator, contributing written columns to Italian motorsport publications and providing television commentary.
Amati's place in motorsport history is defined by two distinct dimensions: the extraordinary personal courage she demonstrated in the aftermath of her kidnapping, and her persistence in reaching the highest level of single-seater racing as one of only five women ever to enter a Formula One World Championship event. Her struggles to qualify for Brabham in 1992 reflected the car's uncompetitiveness as much as any driver limitation — Hill, a future World Champion, fared only marginally better in the same machinery. That her 1992 appearances remain the most recent female Formula One qualifying attempts is a measure of how far the sport has remained from gender inclusivity in its top tier.