Moving from Hyōgo to Tokyo when she was seventeen,[2] Minamino attended Horikoshi High School with Minako Honda and Yukiko Okada, graduating in 1986.

Despite being a mostly unknown face in Japanese entertainment, Minamino was given an unusually large number of photos in a seinen manga magazine.

She was also nominated at the 11th Annual Japan Academy Prize event as "Rookie of the Year" for her performance in the movie version released in 1987.

Along with Shizuka Kudo, Miho Nakayama, and Yui Asaka, Minamino was considered one of the Four Divas (四天王, Shitennō) of the time until she temporarily suspended her career in 1992.

[citation needed] In the 1992 film Kantsubaki, she made her first nude appearance, closely followed by her second in Watashi o Daite, Soshite Kiss-shite that same year.