[4] He attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan for two semesters, studying women's wear design, before dropping out.

[10] In early 2018, it was announced that Aquaria was chosen as one of fourteen contestants for the tenth season of RuPaul's Drag Race, upon her first audition for the program.

[6][11] She won three main challenges, never ranked in the bottom two, and was the first queen in the show's history to win both the ball and the "Snatch Game" in the same season.

[26] As part of the final challenge of season 10, Aquaria and the other top four contestants wrote and recorded their own verses for RuPaul's song "American."

[30] On July 3, 2018, singer Bebe Rexha criticized Aquaria and the other Drag Race top four queens over Twitter for supposed bad behavior toward her at the VH1 Trailblazer Honors, such as not talking to her and being "cold".

[31][32] In May 2018, Aquaria criticized rapper Travis Scott for removing Amanda Lepore, a transgender woman, from the cover art of his 2018 album Astroworld.