While working at Jack LaLanne's health spa, she was encouraged by her friends to try modeling, and also began taking acting and guitar-playing classes.

In 1985, Quigley appeared in the zombie horror film The Return of the Living Dead playing a teenaged punk, which is considered one of her most notable roles and earned her "scream queen" status.

She repeatedly worked with the directors David DeCoteau (Creepozoids, Nightmare Sisters, and Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama) and Kevin Tenney (Night of the Demons and Witchtrap), and appeared alongside fellow scream queens Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer.

By the end of the 1980s, Quigley decided to take a different direction and starred in the first two films of Rick Sloane's comedy series Vice Academy.

After getting a few extra parts, she got her first acting role in the Charles Band-produced erotic comedy Fairy Tales (1978), wherein she appeared as Sleeping Beauty.

In 1981, producer and director Jim Feazell decided to shoot some additional footage for the reissue of his unsuccessful 1975 psychological thriller Wheeler.

Her friend Haydee Pomar, whom she met on the set of Cheech & Chong's comedy Nice Dreams (1981), played the bass guitar.

She played in David DeCoteau's movies 1313: Cougar Cult (2012) and 3 Scream Queens (2014), and Charles Band's web series Trophy Heads (2014) with Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer.

In 2012, Quigley guest appeared in Massachusetts death metal band Sexcrement's music video entitled "Trucker Bombed".

Linnea's father was Dr. William "Nip" Heath Quigley, a dean of education and vice president at Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa.

After she graduated from Bettendorf High School in 1976, she moved to California with her parents when her father became the president of the Los Angeles campus of Palmer College.

She switched to a vegetarian diet in the late 1970s after her move to Los Angeles, first by eliminating red meat, then chicken and fish, and eventually all dairy and all other foods from animals.