[1][3] She is the niece of Tamil film actor, comedian and former Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha Cho Ramaswamy.

In Telugu, she starred with Rajendra Prasad in Madana Gopaludu (1987), Bhama Kalapam (1988), Asthulu Anthasthulu (1988) and Bava Marudula Saval (1988).

She played a small role in the Hindi film Dayavan that starred veteran actor Vinod Khanna.

Her breakthrough came from K. Raghavendra Rao directorial movies where she emerged as a commercial romantic diva, due to successful movies such as Alludugaru (1990), Allari Mogudu (1992), Major Chandrakanth (1993) along with Mohan Babu and Allari Priyudu (1993) along with Rajasekhar.

Ramya made her debut as a heroine in Hindi films with Yash Chopra's Parampara (1993).

She acted in a few more Hindi films including Subhash Ghai's Khalnayak (1993), Mahesh Bhatt's Chaahat (1996), David Dhawan's Banarasi Babu (1997), Bade Miyan Chote Miyan (1998) along with Amitabh Bachchan and Govinda and Shapath with Mithun Chakraborty.

After a four-year break from Tamil cinema, in 1999, Ramya played the female antagonist, Neelambari in Padayappa opposite Rajinikanth.

[7] Ramya has also acted in many devotional films including Rajakali Amman (2000), Nageswari (2001), Sri Raja Rajeshwari (2001) and Annai Kaligambal (2003).

Later, she acted in supporting roles in Telugu as Ranga The Donga (2010), Yamudiki Mogudu (2012) and in Kannada as Sweety Nanna Jodi (2013) and Maanikya (2014).

[13] In 2022, Ramya appeared in Dharma Productions and Puri Jagannadh's sports action film Liger.