Florin Prunea was born on 8 August 1968 in București, Romania and he started playing football at junior level in 1977 when he went to play for Steaua București but he was rejected, shortly afterwards going at rival, Dinamo București where coach Fane Stănculescu used him as a striker in his first three years, then he worked with Gheorghe Timar who started using him as a goalkeeper and in the later years of his youth career he was coached by Iosif Varga, also during his youth years he was teammate with future national team competitor, Bogdan Stelea.

[1][18] Florin Prunea played 41 games in which he conceded 26 goals at international level for Romania, making his debut on 5 December 1990 under coach Mircea Rădulescu in a 6–0 victory against San Marino at the Euro 1992 qualifiers in which he made a total of 3 appearances.

[1][3][19][20] He made three appearances at the successful 1994 World Cup qualifiers, being part of the "Golden Generation" that reached the quarter-finals of the final tournament, being used by coach Anghel Iordănescu in only one game from the group stage in which he kept a clean sheet in the 1–0 victory in front of the USA, as in the first two Bogdan Stelea was preferred, but Prunea played from the eight-finals onwards, rather badly when he conceded an easy goal from Balbo in the 75th minute of the eventual 3–2 victory due to splendid performances by Dumitrescu and Hagi in front of Argentina but another mistake in the quarter-final game against Sweden would not go by unpunished, where after a goal by Brolin in the 78th minute and double goals by Răducioiu in the 88th and 101st minute, the outcome seemed to be Romanian victory yet again when with five minutes to the final whistle, Prunea did not jump in time at a 40 meters cross and gave giant striker Kennet Andersson the chance to level the score to 2–2 so the game went on to penalties where Sweden won 5–4 after Petrescu and Belodedici could not defeat Thomas Ravelli.

[19][21][22][23][24][8][25][26][27][28][29][30] He played one game at the successful Euro 1996 qualifiers, also being used by Iordănescu in a 2–1 loss against Spain as Romania did not pass the group stage of the final tournament.

[19] He played two games at the successful 1998 World Cup qualifiers and was selected by Iordănescu to be part of the squad that went at the final tournament, however he did not made any appearances there.