[5] Lin continued to model part-time before leaving the industry and working as an administrative assistant for the Fubon Cultural and Educational Foundation (富邦文教基金會).

In 2000, Lin left Fubon and spent three months studying in Japan, then returned to Taiwan and modeling, with Catwalk Production House.

In 2004, Lin starred in a broad series of advertisements in Taiwan that included big giant building-size posters, billboards, and television commercials.

Her rise to fame initiated a Taiwanese craze for supermodels, an effect commentators named "The Lin Chi-ling Phenomenon" (Chinese: 林志玲現象; pinyin: Lín Zhìlíng xiànxiàng).

[9] On 8 August 2005, Lin was in Dalian, China, shooting an advertisement for Procter & Gamble home products when she fell from the back of a horse she was riding and was inadvertently trampled.

Workers rushed Lin to a nearby hospital where doctors discovered that she had suffered six broken ribs, a punctured left lung, and an accumulation of blood in the pleural cavity.

Lin starred as one of the three female leads in the 2010 Fuji TV Japanese television drama Tsuki no Koibito.

Lin made her film début role in a historical epic directed by John Woo entitled Red Cliff.

1 highest-paid model in the Greater China region, followed by Jennifer Du (#2), Gaile Lai (#3) and Lynn Hung (#4).