Gore was born in Nashville, Tennessee, and grew up there as well as in Washington D.C.. She received her B.A. in history and literature in 1995 from Harvard University, a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2000, and a Master of Arts degree from Union Theological Seminary in 2013. During college, she interned as a journalist for WREG-TV and The Times-Picayune. She later wrote for El Pais in Spain and Slate in Seattle. After law school, she was briefly an associate with the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York City. She left that job to work in the non-profit sector as Director of Community Affairs for the Association to Benefit Children (ABC), and as a volunteer in the legal center of Sanctuary for Families. In 2017, Gore was elected to the Board of Directors of Riverkeeper.

On July 12, 1997 she married Andrew Newman Schiff, a primary care physician in Washington, D.C., and great-great grandson of Jacob Schiff, at the Washington National Cathedral. Andrew Schiff now works as a biotechnology fund manager. They have three children together: Wyatt Gore Schiff (born July 4, 1999, in New York City), Anna Hunger Schiff, (born August 23, 2001, in New York City), and Oscar Aitcheson Schiff (born in 2006). She and husband Andrew separated in 2010 and later divorced.

Gore was the Youth Outreach Chair on her father’s 2000 presidential campaign. Together with her father’s former Harvard roommate Tommy Lee Jones, she officially nominated Gore as the presidential candidate during the 2000 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. She also introduced her father during the launching of his campaign.

In 2006, she published Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Shaped Modern America, a profile of nine modern and historical American women. Stating that the book was written in reaction to the results of the 2000 campaign, Gore said, “I wanted to turn all that frustration and sadness into something positive.”

In June 2016, Gore was among 23 protesters who were arrested for demonstrating at the site of construction of a pipeline in Boston that would carry fracked gas for the Houston-based Spectra company. Previously, she was part of the successful campaign against a fracked gas pipeline (the Constitution pipeline) through New York state.