Hutton was born Mary Laurence Hutton on November 17, 1943 in Charleston, South Carolina, to Lawrence Bryan Hutton and Minnie (Behrens) Hutton. Her father was a native of Mississippi, where he grew up next-door to William Faulkner, and was stationed in England during World War II.

After the war, Hutton’s mother divorced her father in 1945, and she relocated to Miami, and later, Tampa, Florida. Hutton spent the remainder of her early life in Tampa, not knowing her father, who died June 24, 1956 from a heart attack at age 37. He was working as a Farm Editor for Cotton Trade Journal living in Shelby, Tennessee with his second wife Mary Elizabeth (Everette) Hutton. His burial Oxford Memorial Cemetery Oxford, Mississippi. “Never meeting my father was the most painful thing in my life,” Hutton said in 1996. “I look just like him and I’m named for him, but all I have are these two books of his letters and drawings from the war. The day of my birth he wrote and told me about our ancestors, what he thought was important in the world, what books I should read and what he wanted for me.”

After her mother remarried, Hutton took the surname “Hall”, although her stepfather never formally adopted her. She graduated from Chamberlain High School in Tampa in 1961, and was among the first students to attend the University of South Florida in 1961. Hutton later relocated with former Tampa disc jockey Pat Chamburs, 19 years her senior, to New York City, where she worked at the Playboy Club. The pair later moved to New Orleans, where she attended Newcomb College, then a coordinate college within Tulane University, and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1964.

Hutton returned to New York in the mid 1960s, changed her name to “Lauren Hutton”, and embarked on a career as a model. She was advised by agents to hide the gap in her teeth and tried using morticians’ wax to cover the gap; she later used a cap to hide it, which she would often swallow, laugh out, or misplace. Hutton eventually retained this “imperfection” and the All Movie Guide stated that it “gave her on-camera persona a down-home sensibility that other, more ethereal models lacked.” She continued to book modeling jobs, and appeared in a Chanel advertisement in 1968, photographed by Richard Avedon.

In 1973, Hutton signed a contract with Revlon cosmetics, worth US$250,000 a year for 20 days’ work (equivalent to $1,440,000 in 2019), a professional relationship that lasted for 10 years. At the time, it was the biggest contract in the history of the modeling industry. Hutton’s initial contract with Revlon involved representation of the Ultima II brand. Twenty years later, she signed a new contract with Revlon to be the spokeswoman for Results, a collection of corrective moisturizing treatments. Her contract with Revlon garnered Hutton further modeling work, and she became a “cover girl,” appearing on the front cover of Vogue a record 26 times.

In 1984, Hutton joined the cast of the short-lived primetime soap drama, Paper Dolls, which co-starred Lloyd Bridges and Morgan Fairchild. In 1986, she co-starred in the lavish TV miniseries Sins, which starred Joan Collins, and also starred opposite Stacy Keach in The Return Of Mike Hammer TV movie. In the spring of 1987, Hutton had a starring role opposite William Devane in a sci-fi themed CBS Movie of the Week titled Timestalkers, and later that year guest-starred in the primetime soap drama Falcon Crest for several episodes.

She also starred in John Carpenter’s TV movie Someone’s Watching Me! (1978) and played the female lead in American Gigolo (1980). She went on to appear in Lassiter (1984), Once Bitten (1985), a modest hit, and Guilty as Charged (1992). She also made an uncredited cameo appearance as a celebrity party guest in the 1985 film Perfect.

In 1988, she appeared in a campaign for Barneys New York, and in 1993, performed as a runway model for designer Calvin Klein, to which The New York Times responded by publishing an article stating that Hutton was “just as good as the current flock of fledglings.” In 1997, Hutton became a brand ambassador and appeared in multiple advertising campaigns for the Australian department store David Jones; in 2001, she was replaced by Megan Gale.

Hutton met Luca Babini on a film set in 1991 and he said of the relationship’s development in 1996: “I was coming out of a divorce, and she became like a sister to me. Then I fell in love with her. And I loved her feet, which say so much about a person.” Babini also referred to Hutton as “accessible and down to earth,” and described her as a person with “very clear opinions” that she was willing to express.

In 1995, Hutton was cast in the CBS soap opera Central Park West, playing the wealthy socialite Linda Fairchild until the show was canceled the following year.

Hutton was involved in a 27-year-long relationship with her manager Bob Williamson, who died in 1997. Williamson squandered some US$13 million of her money. Hutton later explained that he had saved her life on five occasions and made sure that she “didn’t get seduced by the work.” She spoke of a void that Williamson filled:

Hutton was presented on the November 1999 Millennium cover of American Vogue as one of the “Modern Muses”. Following her recovery from a motorcycle accident in 2000, she became the spokeswoman for her own signature brand of cosmetics, “Lauren Hutton’s Good Stuff”, a line of cosmetic products for mature women. The brand was sold primarily in the USA, but was also available through secondary distribution channels throughout Europe and South America.

In October 2000, Hutton joined a motorbike group, which included actors Dennis Hopper, Laurence Fishburne and Jeremy Irons, to celebrate “The Art of the Motorcycle” exhibit at the Hermitage-Guggenheim museum in Las Vegas, Nevada. Prior to the journey, Hutton informed the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “I love the feeling of being a naked egg atop that throbbing steel. You feel vulnerable — but so alive.” En route, Hutton crashed near Hoover Dam, on the border between the US states of Arizona and Nevada, going over 100 miles (160 km) per hour, and suffered multiple leg fractures, a fractured arm, broken ribs and sternum, and a punctured lung. Hopper later recalled from before the start of the ride: “She had on a little helmet, sort of tied under her chin. It was cute. And Jeremy [Irons] came up to her and said, ‘You got to be kidding.’ He took it off her and gave her a proper helmet.”

Hutton is the original vice-president of the Guggenheim Museum Motorcycle Club, and, in 2003, was a board member of the National Museum of Women in Arts in Washington, D.C., US.

In October 2005, Hutton was interviewed on ABC’s Good Morning America program in relation to the future release of an edition of Big magazine that was entirely dedicated to Hutton’s career and included eight pages of nude photos. Hutton agreed to pose nude for the feature, titled “Lauren Hutton: The Beautiful Persists”, when she was 61 years old, and explained to GMA:

In 2008, Hutton accepted an offer from Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen to appear in the lookbook for their clothing line The Row, and explained in 2010: “I saw the clothes, and they were wonderful, real simple, minimalist designs… Ash had a place on the beach, so we did it at her place… And they would dance on the deck, and I would do what they were doing. And it was good.” During the same year, retailer Mango launched a fashion collection inspired by Hutton’s personal style, and she also appeared in Lord & Taylor’s fall/winter and spring collections. The following year, she was featured in a campaign by Badgley Mischka.

Alongside celebrity models such as Iman and Paulina Porizkova, Hutton was one of the panel members in a roundtable discussion for the “Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion” gala, an annual event organized by the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. Held in May 2009, the discussion occurred at New York’s Minetta Tavern. Photographs of Hutton were also displayed as part of the exhibition The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion that was taking place at The Met and acknowledged the significance of fashion models.

A third-party licensing brand of the Jim Henson Company, Henson Independent Properties (HIP), entered into an agreement with Hutton in November 2010 to act as the global licensing agent for her merchandising program. Targeted at women over 40 years of age, the brand launched products such as eyewear, handbags, and luggage, and home décor, globally in 2012. HIP’s senior vice president at the time referred to Hutton as a “trailblazer” in the press release. Hutton was also a guest judge on the fashion designer reality television show Project Runway in 2010, also appearing in advertisements for J.Crew the same year.

In 2011, Hutton walked the runway for Tom Ford’s spring 2012 collection, and was selected as the house model for the Alexis Bittar jewelry brand. Designer Alexis Bittar, a recipient of the CFDA Accessory Designer of the Year award, personally selected Hutton after choosing Joan Collins for the previous year. Hutton stated that Bittar’s jewelry is “like art and still doesn’t look like anything I have ever seen.” Her photos for the campaign were shot by Jack Pierson. Hutton then appeared alongside people such as actress Shuya Chang and Annie Lennox’s daughter Tali Lennox in the spring 2011 ad campaign for the Club Monaco retail brand. The lookbook was photographed by Ryan McGinley, the youngest photographer to be featured in the Whitney Museum of American Art at the time of the Club Monaco shoot.

In July 2013, Hutton revealed that she was in the process of writing her memoir, which may be titled Smile, and also explained the value of traveling and exploration in her life thus far: “whenever I came back from Africa or the Antarctic, head swelling with the beauty of it all, I found I was loving life again. You look different because of everything that has gone on inside of you…” Her Becoming Sar’h series of books were released beginning in 2017. As of 2004, Hutton resides mainly in Taos, New Mexico, where she owns a prefab steel home.

She appeared in a campaign title “Do Something” by designer Alexander Wang, alongside Rod Stewart and Kate Moss in 2015, and was featured in Tod’s Timeless Icons retrospective in 2016. She was also featured in H&M’s fall 2016 video campaign alongside Hari Nef. In 2016 for Milan Fashion Week, Hutton walked the runway for Bottega Veneta’s Spring 2017 show.