A member of the Movement of Popular Participation (MPP) — Broad Front, she also served as Senator of the Republic from 2020 to 2022 and from 2005 to 2017, as National Representative from 2000 to 2005 and as First Lady of Uruguay as the wife of president José Mujica from 2010 to 2015.

[2] However, she took over as Senator of the Republic, as she was the first substitute for her husband José Mujica who left the seat to take office as Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries in 2005.

[3] In September 2017, she took office as Vice President of Uruguay after the resignation of Raúl Sendic Rodríguez, becoming the first woman to hold the position.

After her father became an associate for a construction company, they moved to Punta del Este, but returned to Montevideo shortly thereafter when the Uruguayan government opposed the government of then-Argentine president Juan Perón, causing him to prohibit Argentine citizens from spending their summers in Uruguay, resulting in her father's company going bankrupt.

She then entered the Alfredo Vásquez Acevedo Institute where she was part of the students' guild, and eventually studied at the University of the Republic in architecture.

After the coup d'état in 1973, which resulted in the beginning of the civic-military dictatorship under Juan María Bordaberry, Topolansky was arrested and imprisoned in a military prison where she endured physical and psychological torture.