Frankel said she moved many times and attended multiple schools before going to boarding school. Frankel attended Catholic schools as a girl, and she graduated in 1988 from the Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where she lived on campus. She attended the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City, Boston University for two years, and graduated with a degree in psychology and communications from New York University.

In 1992, Frankel moved to Los Angeles with hopes of being an actress. While she landed some small acting roles, she worked as a nanny to Paris Hilton and a personal assistant to Jerry Bruckheimer and Linda Bruckheimer. During this time, Frankel also worked as a production assistant on the set of Saved by the Bell. Frankel used these connections to start her first company, called “In Any Event”, a party-planning business, which was short-lived. Her next entrepreneurial enterprise was re-selling pashmina scarves that she bought wholesale from an Indian manufacturer.

In 2003, Frankel started a baking business called “BethennyBakes”, focusing on “healthy” cookies and meal delivery in New York City, which was featured on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, a reality competition series, in 2005. Frankel was one of two finalists on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. The company, BethennyBakes, later went out of business in 2006, but Frankel remained a spokesperson for Pepperidge Farms low-calorie line.

In 2008, Frankel began starring in the reality television series The Real Housewives of New York City, which premiered in March on Bravo. In June 2010, Frankel starred in the Bravo reality series Bethenny Getting Married? (later retitled Bethenny Ever After), which documented her engagement and marriage to Jason Hoppy as well as the birth of their daughter. The series premiere became Bravo’s highest-rated one at the time, garnering 2.1 million viewers. In September 2010, Frankel announced her exit from The Real Housewives of New York City following its third season. In November, she competed in the reality competition series Skating with the Stars and finished in second place.

In March 2009, Frankel’s book, Naturally Thin: Unleash Your SkinnyGirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting, was published and The SkinnyGirl Dish: Easy Recipes for Your Naturally Thin Life, was published in December. She created an exercise DVD, Body by Bethenny, in spring 2010 and an audiobook, The Skinnygirl Rules, which summarized her two prior books. In 2011, Frankel published, A Place of Yes: 10 Rules for Getting Everything You Want Out of Life and in December 2012, published the novel Skinnydipping.

Frankel created a pre-packaged margarita line, named Skinnygirl Margarita, in 2009, which led to Frankel founding the company Skinnygirl and the cocktail line, Skinnygirl Cocktails. The company has since created products such as “candy, deli meat, sweeteners, popcorn, salad dressings, shapewear, and most recently, jeans and apparel.” She sold the cocktail line to Beam Global for $120 million in 2011.

Frankel posed nude for a PETA billboard in September 2009.

In November 2009, her father Robert J. Frankel passed away.

She married pharmaceutical sales executive Jason Hoppy in March 2010. They have one daughter, Bryn. After the couple separated in December 2012, Frankel filed for divorce in January 2013. A custody agreement was finalized in June 2014, followed by a financial settlement in July 2016. Frankel and Hoppy are still legally married as of August 2019. She was in a relationship with film producer Paul Bernon from late 2018 to late 2020.

Frankel taped the pilot of a potential talk show in June 2011. The syndicated daytime talk show, eponymously titled Bethenny, premiered in September 2013. It was canceled in February 2014 after one season. Frankel rejoined The Real Housewives of New York City as a cast member for its seventh season, which premiered in April 2015. In March 2019, Deadline Hollywood reported that Frankel had signed a deal with MGM Television and the company’s chairman, Mark Burnett, to produce and star in future unscripted television projects. In August of the same year, she announced her departure from The Real Housewives of New York City. Frankel will star in an upcoming HBO Max reality competition series titled The Big Shot with Bethenny, which she will also produce alongside Burnett. The series is set to feature “aspiring business moguls compete for a job on Frankel’s executive team.”

Frankel is the founder of BStrong, a disaster relief organization. In 2017, the organization raised $300,000 in donations and supplies for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, after which Frankel visited Houston, Texas to distribute these items. In the same year, Frankel traveled to Mexico City and Jojutla, Mexico following the Puebla earthquake to raise awareness for the disaster’s recovery efforts, for which BStrong also raised $150,000. Also in the same year, Frankel chartered four planes to Puerto Rico and distributed medical supplies, food, water, and hygiene products in assisting with Hurricane Maria relief efforts. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, BStrong raised funds and delivered personal protective equipment such as masks, goggles, gowns, and sheets to hospitals in the U.S.

Frankel has a severe fish allergy and was hospitalized in December 2018 after consuming soup that contained fish. She has since demanded that airlines stop serving fish stating that it is a hazard to passengers with fish allergies to be in the presence of cooked seafood in an enclosed commercial airline jet.