Drnovšek was born in Celje and was raised in the small town of Kisovec in the Municipality of Zagorje ob Savi, where his father Viktor (1923–2006) was the local mine chief and his mother Silva (1921–1978) was a homemaker.

Following the Ten Day War, Drnovšek used his position in the collective presidency to help mediate the Brioni Agreement and to negotiate a peaceful withdrawal of the Yugoslav army from Slovenia.

In 1997, the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia formed a coalition government with the populist Slovenian People's Party which finally enabled Drnovšek to serve a third term in office.

He successfully tackled the twin tasks of reorienting Slovenia's trade away from the wreckage of the old Yugoslavia towards the West and replacing the ineffective Communist-era business model with more market-based mechanisms.

Unlike the other five former Yugoslav republics which were run for much of the 1990s by frequently authoritarian presidents, Slovenia under Drnovšek's premiership quickly emerged from the break-up of the federation as a functioning parliamentary democracy.

Contrary to some other former Communist countries in Eastern Europe, the economic and social transformation in Slovenia pursued by Drnovšek's governments followed a gradualist approach.

He launched several campaigns in foreign policy, such as a failed humanitarian mission to Darfur and a proposal for the solution of the political crisis in Kosovo.

He claimed this was not meant to be a political movement, but rather a wide initiative, aiming to "raise human consciousness and make the world a better place".

Between 2002-04, the relationship between President Drnovšek and Janez Janša, then leader of the opposition, were considered more than good[5] and in the first year of cohabitation, no major problems arose.

When he reemerged in late 2005 he had already changed his lifestyle: he had become a vegan (though one of his colleagues in a televised interview mentioned their regular Sunday visits to a pizzeria in Maxi market, Ljubljana), moved out of the capital into the countryside, and withdrew from party politics completely, ending his already frozen membership in the Liberal Democracy.

[10] The disagreements moved from issues of domestic politics in October 2006, when Drnovšek publicly criticised the treatment of the Strojans, a Romani family whose neighborhood had forced them to relocate, which in turn had subjected them to police supervision and limitation of movement.

[7][12] The tension reached its apex in May 2007, when the newly appointed director of the Slovenian Intelligence and Security Agency Matjaž Šinkovec unclassified several documents from the period before 2004, revealing, among other, that Drnovšek had used secret service funds for personal purposes between 2002-04.

The President reacted with a harsh criticism of the government's policies, accusing the ruling coalition of abusing its power for personal delegitimations[13] and labeled the then current Prime Minister Janez Janša as "the leader of the negative guys"[14] In the last months in office, Drnovšek continued his attacks on Prime Minister Janez Janša, who mostly remained silent on the issue.

In his last months in office, he withdrew to a reclusive life again, devoting his time to the Movement for Justice and Development and the popularization of his lifestyle and views.

During his time in office as the President of Slovenia, he wrote and published several books in spiritual philosophy, including Misli o življenju in zavedanju ("Thoughts on Life and Consciousness"), Zlate misli o življenju in zavedanju ("Golden Thoughts on Life and Consciousness"), Bistvo sveta ("The Essence of the World"), and his last one called Pogovori or Dialogues.

For example, he was present at the inauguration of Evo Morales, the first native American president of Bolivia, and later hosted Bolivian ethnic musicians in the Presidential Palace in Ljubljana.