From the end of the 80s, D'Avena began a more than ten-year and practically uninterrupted series of live performances in numerous places, from large arenas to shopping centres to street parties and small venues.

In 1989 she also began working as a television and radio presenter with the Saturday night variety show on Canale 5 Sabato al Circo, which won the Telegatto in the Children's Programmes category.

Together with Gerry Scotti, Cristina D'Avena presented the 1989 New Year's Eve special on Canale 5, "L'allegria fa novanta", and the one from 1990, Long live cheerfulness.

Since 8 November 1992 she has hosted the children's version of Fiorello's Karaoke on Italia 1, Cantiamo con Cristina, broadcast at 8 pm on Sundays: in each episode, two teams compete to the tune of her theme songs.

In the fifth edition of La sai l'ultima?, broadcast on Canale 5 in the 1995/1996 television season hosted by Gerry Scotti and Paola Barale, she obtained the role of special correspondent travelling around Italy.

In 2017, after 35 years of career with the Five Record/RTI Music label, Cristina D'Avena moved to the Warner Music Italy record company taking a more general artistic direction: on 10 November 2017 the album Duets - Tutti cantano Cristina was released with some of his songs rearranged and recorded in duets with 16 big names in Italian music; the operation was highly commercially successful and reached the top of the best-selling albums chart, obtaining gold status (25,000+ copies) after three weeks and platinum (50,000+ copies) on 2 January 2018;[3] Duets made Cristina D'Avena the only woman in the top 20 best-selling albums in Italy in 2017.

[4] On 8 February 2019, the singer was a guest on the fourth evening of the Festival di Sanremo as a duet with Shade and Federica Carta in Senza farlo apposta, while on 8 March "Centouno Dalmatian Street" was published, the artist's first theme song for a Disney animated series.

In the summer, Netflix entrusted Cristina with "My Life Is Going On", the theme song for the TV show Money Heist, in which the singer makes a brief cameo dressed like the characters from the series.

[citation needed] Cristina has been the presenter and the special guest of many TV programmes for children, such as Holyday on Ice, Sabato al Circo, Luna Party, L' Allegria fa '90, Bim Bum Bam, Buona Domenica, I Fatti Vostri, Lo Zecchino d' Oro, Game Boat, and Matricole e Meteore.

[12][13] On 16 February 2018, D'Avena returned to television as a member of the jury on the first edition of Sanremo Giovani, a teenage talent show hosted by Antonella Clerici.

Her presence arouses bitter controversy among her fans, who consider the values usually communicated by D'Avena to be incompatible with those that characterize the political party, particularly in the field of civil rights, or accuse her of having used the label of "gay icon" without real merit.