She has been working as an actress for almost 30 years, but achieved fame in 2006 when she became the protagonist of La Fea Más Bella (The Prettiest Ugly Girl), a Mexican telenovela, with her real-life mother.

As a child, in the movie El Gran Triunfo in 1981, Vale portrayed the daughter of Mexican superstar Rigo Tovar.

From 1982 to 1986 her family was banned from Televisa due to the launch of the independent production "Lupita" on the rival TV Azteca network in which she played the title role.

However, the soap opera La Fea Más Bella was her first starring role in any Mexican telenovela, though she had appeared in a number of Spanish language programs.

In 2007, after the finale of La Fea Más Bella, she sang one of the theme songs for the hit soap opera during an appearance on El Show de Cristina.

She was overwhelmed to the point that she called for a meeting with all major television stations in Mexico and had them ask all the questions they wanted to ask, saying that if they did not ask then, they would never get answers because she planned on closing that chapter in her life because it was very painful to talk about something so private.

[citation needed] Vale was also targeted much by claims that she liked to get involved with married men, and a story was published in 2006 about her having caused the separation of a family, because her then-current boyfriend had filed for divorce and his children had to live with seeing their father with another woman in public.

[citation needed] Other rumors that have followed concerning her love life have been curiously sparked by a family friend, Cristina Saralegui, host of El Show de Cristina, who, when interviewing the cast of La Fea Más Bella, stated that she thought that 'Don Fernando' (Jaime Camil) and 'Doña Lety' (Angélica Vale) had really fallen in love, but she was cut off by Angélica María, also present, who changed the subject.

[citation needed] Angélica María also sparked rumors about her daughter because, she had made a habit of saying that she was waiting impatiently for her only child to make her a grandmother.

[citation needed] Vale's father was Venezuelan while her mother is Mexican American who was born in Louisiana; she has a Jewish grandfather.