Chinchilla was born in Carmen Central, San José in 1959. She is the daughter of Rafael Ángel Chinchilla Fallas, a former comptroller of Costa Rica, and Emilce Miranda Castillo. She married Mario Alberto Madrigal Díaz on 23 January 1982 and divorced on 22 May 1985.

Chinchilla met her second husband, José María Rico Cueto, a Spanish lawyer who held Canadian citizenship, in 1990 while both were working as consultants for the Center for the Administration of Justice at the University of Florida in Miami, Florida. The couple had a son, José María Rico Chinchilla, in 1996. Chinchilla married Rico on 26 March 2000. She was widowed on April 15, 2019, when her husband José María Rico died due to Alzheimer’s.

Chinchilla was one of two vice-presidents elected under the second Arias administration (2006–2010). She resigned the vice-presidency in 2008 in order to prepare her run for the presidency in 2010. On 7 June 2009 she won the Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN) primary with a 15% margin over her nearest rival, and was thus endorsed as the party’s presidential candidate.

The British Foreign and Commonwealth minister with responsibility for Central America, Baroness Kinnock, applauded Chinchilla’s election as the first female President of Costa Rica. Kinnock also praised Chinchilla for stating her continued support for the forward thinking approach by the previous government in working to combat climate change and said that the UK would continue to work with Costa Rica on this important issue in 2010.

Laura Chinchilla’s political platform emphasized anti-crime legislation in response to Costa Rica’s growing concerns over safety. In 2010, the year in which Laura Chinchilla was elected president of Costa Rica, the country observed a high crime rate in practically all crimes, which contributed to deteriorating the perception of the state as guarantor of justice and security.

In October 2010, Nicaraguan forces occupied islands in the San Juan River delta. The land is claimed by the Nicaraguan and Costa Rican governments. Some observers opined that the Nicaraguan action was probably connected with President Daniel Ortega’s reelection campaign. The Costa Rican government reacted to the Nicaraguan action. Costa Rica sought to place the case before the International Court of Justice. By mid-2011, President Chinchilla decided to build a road along the river, as a response to what she and her government saw as a Nicaraguan invasion of Costa Rican territory. In Spanish Name of the Road The road was officially named “Ruta 1858, Juan Rafael Mora Porras” to honor a Costa Rican hero, who led the country in the fight in Nicaragua and Costa Rica against the forces of William Walker, who had proclaimed himself as president of Nicaragua, and wanted to restore slavery in Central America.

Environmental protection and sustainability is very important for the President, and she continues Costa Rica’s level of leadership in these areas, for example, in May 2011 she declared the film Odyssey 2050 of ‘Public and Cultural Interest’.

The 2012 song “Wonderful Journey” by Japanese group Sakura Gakuin mentions that the then President of Costa Rica shares her name with then member Raura Iida, since the Japanese pronunciations of both names are identical.

In 2013, however, the Mexican opinion poll firm Consulta Mitofsky released a survey that placed Chinchilla as the least popular president in Latin America with a 13% approval rate, just behind Porfirio Lobo of Honduras.

Chinchilla has stated that while she supports LGBT rights and opposes discrimination based on sexual orientation, she believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and because of that she supports a different legal framework for same-sex couples. She signed into law on 4 July 2013 new legislation supporting civil partnerships that can be extended to same-sex unions. She also stated that she would not oppose same-sex marriage if it was legalized by the country’s courts.

In 2016, she was considered one of the most powerful women in Central America according to the World Economic Forum.

Since 2016, Chinchilla has been serving as the president of the Advisory Council of She Works, a company focused on the empowerment of women; and is also a rapporteur for the freedom of expression of the Telecommunications Organization of Latin America. She is member of the Advisory Council of the 2019 Human Development Report of the UNDP, focussing on inequality. She is also member of the board of Concordia Summit, and the Vice President of the Club of Madrid. In 2019 she became a member of the International Olympic Committee.

Chinchilla led the Observation Mission deployed by the OAS to Mexico to observe the June 2015 federal election, as well as the Observation Electoral Mission during the 2016 elections in the US, and the electoral process in Brazil and in Paraguay in 2018.

In 2020, Chinchilla was her country’s candidate to head the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Shortly before the vote, she dropped her bid, criticizing a process seen favoring U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee Mauricio Claver-Carone.