Amati was born to actress Anna Maria Pancani and theatre-chain owner Giovanni Amati. As a child she expressed a strong interest in motor racing and later attended a motor racing school together with her friend Elio de Angelis.
At the age of eighteen, on 12 February 1978, Amati was kidnapped by three gangsters in a group led by French citizen Jean Daniel Nieto. She was forcibly removed from a car near her parents' villa in Rome and held for 75 days in a remote location. Because Italian authorities had introduced a policy of freezing the assets of kidnap victims' families to prevent ransom payments, Amati's parents raised the 800 million lira ($933,000) required for her release by using box office receipts from the film Star Wars, selling family jewellery, and borrowing from their servants' life savings. She was released on 27 April 1978. Nieto was later arrested, sentenced to 18 years in prison, escaped in 1989, and was re-arrested in April 2010.
Amati began racing professionally in the Formula Abarth series in 1981, winning several times over four years. She moved to Italian Formula Three in 1985–86, scoring a number of wins during a competitive campaign. In 1987 she graduated to Formula 3000, entering three rounds but qualifying only once, at Donington. She returned to F3000 in 1988 with Lola and managed two tenth-place finishes, at Monza and Jerez.
In 1989 Amati competed in the Japanese Super Formula Championship with little success. Returning to Europe in 1990, she raced in International F3000 with three different teams across the season, recording improved results. The 1991 season, contested with GJ Motorsports in a Reynard 91D Cosworth, produced six qualifying appearances and several non-scoring top-ten finishes. At the end of that year she completed 30 laps in a Benetton Formula One car during a test, her first experience of the machinery.
In January 1992 Amati signed with the Brabham team to partner Eric van de Poele. The signing attracted considerable publicity, as she became the first female driver to enter a Formula One race since Desiré Wilson in 1980. The struggling Brabham team had been unable to secure their preferred candidate, Japanese F3000 driver Akihiko Nakaya, who was denied a superlicence because the FIA did not recognise the Japanese F3000 series as an appropriate stepping stone.
At the opening round in South Africa, Amati spun six times during practice and set a time nine seconds slower than pole-sitter Nigel Mansell and four seconds slower than her teammate. She failed to qualify. At the Mexican Grand Prix her time was more than ten seconds slower than Mansell. In Brazil she and van de Poele lapped respectively ten and six seconds adrift of Mansell and were excluded from the race.
Following her third consecutive failure to qualify, Brabham replaced Amati with Damon Hill. As of 2025, Amati remains the last female driver to have attempted to qualify a Formula One car for a World Championship race.
Amati entered the Porsche Supercup in 1993 to contest the Women's European Championship. From 1994 to 1996 she raced in the Ferrari Challenge. After a sabbatical in 1997 she returned in 1998 with a Ferrari 355 and also raced in the International Sports Racing Series in an Alfa Romeo. She competed at the 1998 Sebring 12 Hours driving a BMW M3 alongside Craig Carter and Andy Petery, retiring with clutch failure. She also entered the 1000 km of Monza that year but was unable to start. In the SportsRacing World Cup in 1999 she finished third in the SR2 class at season's end. Following her retirement from racing she worked briefly as a motorsport journalist and television commentator for Italian publications.