Choi Mi-hyang was first discovered when she won a talent audition organized by MBC in 1994, then made her acting debut in the drama series War and Love in 1995.

Directed by Yoon Seok-ho as the second installment of his "season dramas,"[2] Winter Sonata became a phenomenal hit throughout Asia and has been credited as one of the initiators of the Korean Wave.

She played a terminally ill heroine in Now and Forever,[9][10] and a more risque character in sex comedy Everybody Has Secrets ("The Original Version of Irish film About Adam).

[25][26] During the press conference for the 2011 series, Can't Lose, co-starring Yoon Sang-hyun, featuring a lawyer couple facing their own divorce suit, she was asked if she worried about shedding her pure and innocent image.

[27][28] In 2012, Choi was cast in the Chinese drama City Lovers, in which she portrayed the CEO at an event management company opposite Qin Hao, a newly employed businessman at her firm.

[29][30][31] Later that year, she became the host of Choi Ji-woo's Delicious Korea on food lifestyle cable channel O'live TV alongside fashion designer Jung Kuho.

The 5-episode show, which aired from November 23 to December 21, 2012, aimed to promote Korean cuisine and culture to the world, and the two hosts traveled through South Korea and introduced little-known regional food to the viewers.

[43][44][45][46] This was followed by the cable series Twenty Again, where she gained critical acclaim as a shy 38-year-old housewife who decides to experience campus college life for the first time alongside her 20-year-old son.

[53] Choi married her non-celebrity boyfriend who is 9 years her junior, on March 29, 2018, in a private wedding, only publicly announcing it just hours prior through a handwritten letter released in her fan club website.