Amati was born in Rome to actress Anna Maria Pancani and theatre-chain owner Giovanni Amati. As a child she developed a passion for cars and motorsport. On 12 February 1978, at age 18, she was kidnapped for ransom by three gangsters led by Jean Daniel Nieto, who forcibly removed her from a car near her family's villa in Rome. She was held in a wooden cage for 75 days, suffering physical and mental abuse, before being released on 27 April 1978 after an 800 million-lira ($933,000) ransom was paid. Her family raised the money using box office receipts from the film Star Wars, selling family jewellery, and borrowing from servants' life savings — because Italian authorities had frozen assets of kidnap victims' families to discourage ransom payments. Nieto was later arrested, sentenced to 18 years, escaped prison in 1989, and was recaptured in April 2010.
Amati began racing professionally in the Formula Abarth series in 1981, winning several times over four years. She attended a motor racing school alongside her friend Elio de Angelis. In 1985–86 she moved up to Italian Formula Three, scoring a number of wins across the campaign. In 1987 she entered Formula 3000, qualifying for one of three attempted races at Donington. She returned to F3000 in 1988 with Lola, managing two tenth-place finishes at Monza and Jerez. In 1989 she raced briefly in Japan's Super Formula Championship with little success, before returning to Europe in 1990 for the International F3000 season, where she moved through three teams — Roni Motorsports, Lola, and Cobra Motorsports — across the campaign. In 1991 she joined GJ Motorsports for a full season in a Reynard 91D Cosworth, qualifying for six rounds and recording several non-points top-ten finishes. At the end of 1991 she tested a Formula One car for the first time, completing 30 laps in a Benetton.
Amati signed with the Brabham team in January 1992 to partner Eric van de Poele. The team had been unable to sign their intended driver, Japanese F3000 racer Akihiko Nakaya, after the FIA declined to recognise the Japanese F3000 series as a qualifying ladder for the superlicence. Amati became the first female driver to enter a Formula One World Championship race since Desiré Wilson in 1980, and the announcement generated significant publicity for the struggling Brabham team.
At the season-opening South African Grand Prix, mechanics were still fitting her seat during the race weekend. She spun six times in practice and failed to qualify, her best time placing her nine seconds slower than pole-sitter Nigel Mansell and four seconds slower than van de Poele. At the Mexican Grand Prix she again failed to qualify, more than ten seconds slower than Mansell. At the Brazilian Grand Prix she and van de Poele were excluded from the race after lapping respectively ten and six seconds slower than the pole time. Brabham subsequently replaced Amati with Damon Hill. Hill himself failed to qualify for the next five races, underlining the difficulty of the car rather than Amati alone; he finally reached the grid for the 1992 British Grand Prix, lapping over eight seconds slower than pole.
Amati competed in the Porsche SuperCup in 1993 to win the Women's European Championship, and raced in the Ferrari Challenge from 1994 to 1996. She entered the 1998 Sebring 12 Hours in a BMW M3 alongside Craig Carter and Andy Petery, retiring with clutch trouble. She also competed in the 1999 SportsRacing World Cup in an SR2-class entry, finishing third in her class at season's end. Following retirement from competition, she worked as a sport commentator and wrote columns for Italian motorsport publications.
Amati holds the distinction of being the most recent woman to attempt to qualify a Formula One World Championship car. Her three failed qualifying attempts at the 1992 South African, Mexican, and Brazilian Grands Prix placed her in the record books as the last of five women to have attempted to race in F1's World Championship era. Despite never starting a race, her campaign with Brabham has ensured her place in the documented history of women in top-level motorsport.