Langenkamp’s career began in film, where she was cast as an extra in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film The Outsiders. The same year, Langenkamp had a speaking role in Coppola’s next film Rumble Fish, which earned her a SAG card. Her scenes were deleted from the final cut of both films. The 1984 film Nickel Mountain, which is based on John Gardner’s 1973 novel of the same name, marked her acting debut.

Langenkamp was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her mother, Mary Alice (née Myers), is an artist, and her father, Robert Dobie Langenkamp, is a petroleum attorney who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy in both the Carter Administration (where he was largely responsible for realizing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) and the Clinton Administration (where he was largely responsible for privatizing Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1), and as Director of the National Energy & Environmental Law & Policy Institute of the University of Tulsa College of Law. She is of German, Scottish, and English ancestry. Langenkamp attended Holland Hall School in Tulsa but later moved to Washington, D.C. after her father’s appointment to the Carter administration where she attended The National Cathedral School for Girls, graduating in 1982.

In 1985, Langenkamp was cast in Suburban Beat, a TV pilot that was not picked up for a full series, where she played Hope Sherman, the youngest housewife. The same year, Langenkamp starred in the music video for ZZ Top’s “Sleeping Bag”. The following year, she guest starred in CBS Schoolbreak Special and ABC Afterschool Specials.

In 1987, Langenkamp reprised her role as Nancy in the film A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. The film focused on the survivors of Freddy Krueger’s previous attempts. The same year, she portrayed Tracy in The New Adventures of Beans Baxter and Monica in Hotel.

Langenkamp played Marie Lubbock on the ABC television series Just the Ten of Us, a spin-off of the popular ABC situation comedy Growing Pains (on which Langenkamp guest-starred), from 1988 to 1990. Both Growing Pains and Just the Ten of Us won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lighting Design / Lighting Direction for a Variety Series. That same year, she and her castmates were nominated for the Young Artist Award for Best Young Actor/Actress Ensemble in a Television Comedy, Drama Series or Special. In 1989, she had a cameo role as the first victim of Horace Pinker in Wes Craven’s Shocker. In the film, she is shown on a news report being pulled away on a stretcher. In a retrospective interview, Langenkamp revealed that she auditioned for an episode of the television series Freddy’s Nightmares.

Langenkamp wed David LeRoy Anderson, a special effects artist, in 1989, and together, they have two children, son Daniel “Atticus” Anderson (1991-2018), who died as the result of brain tumor, and daughter Isabelle Anderson. She was previously married to Alan Pasqua, a musician, from 1984 until 1987.

Langenkamp returned to the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, playing a fictionalized version of herself in the 1994 film Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. The same year, she portrayed the figure skater Nancy Kerrigan in the NBC television film Tonya & Nancy: The Inside Story, which focused on the 1994 attack on Kerrigan.

In 1995, Langenkamp starred in The Demolitionist. In 1997, Langenkamp portrayed Lou Ann Solomon in one episode of the short-lived science fiction/horror television series Perversions of Science. Langenkamp later starred in the direct-to-video film Fugitive Mind (1999). In 2000, she had a guest role in 18 Wheels of Justice as a waitress. The following year, Langenkamp, alongside her husband David Anderson, launched the Malibu Gum Factory which sold locally manufactured chewing gum that featured trading cards of local surfers inside each package. In 2002, Langenkamp portrayed Janet Thompson in an episode of JAG. After this appearance, she took a break from acting to focus on her family. In 2005, Langenkamp was cast in the Wes Craven horror film Cursed. The film had to be reshot and rewritten causing Langenkamp to leave the production due to scheduling conflicts.

In 2007, Langenkamp was cast as herself in the indie mockumentary film The Bet (released as a web series with the same title in April 2020). She starred in, executive produced, and narrated the 2010 documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy. The following year, Langenkamp produced a documentary entitled I Am Nancy, which focused on her experience portraying Nancy in the A Nightmare on Elm Street films.

In 2012, Langenkamp portrayed Dorothy in the horror film The Butterfly Room. As a partner in her husband’s Special FX Make-up company, AFX Studio, Heather worked on the horror comedy film The Cabin in the Woods. The same year, she appeared as herself in a short documentary entitled The Cabin in the Woods: An Army of Nightmares – Makeup & Animatronic, which was included in the film’s Blu-ray release and examined how the creatures were brought to life through special effects.

In 2013, Langenkamp appeared as herself in the documentary Fantasm and had a small role of an alien in the film, Star Trek Into Darkness in which her husband David Leroy Anderson designed all of the Special FX make-up. In 2014, she made a cameo appearance in the fourth season of the horror anthology series American Horror Story, titled Freak Show, as a Tupperware party lady.

In 2015, Langenkamp was cast in the short film Intruder, portrayed Sharon Monroe in four episodes of the drama series The Bay, and narrated the short horror film Vault of the Macabre II. In 2016, Langenkamp starred in the horror drama film Home.

In 2017, Langenkamp had a cameo role in the short horror comedy film The Sub and appeared as herself in the documentary Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Sematary. She has a cameo appearance in the horror sequel film Hellraiser: Judgment. Also in 2017, Langenkamp portrayed the adult version of the “final girl” Donna Boone in the Syfy television horror film Truth or Dare, guiding a group of teenagers with their battle with a deadly spirit that left her physically scarred several years prior.