Woolverton was born in 1952 in Long Beach, California. As a child, she began acting in the local children’s theater as an escape from what she has described as a “traumatic childhood.” She graduated from high school in 1969 with honors in the school’s theater program. She attended the California State University, Long Beach, graduating with a BFA in Theater Arts in 1973. After the college graduation, she attended the California State University, Fullerton, to receive a master’s degree in Theater for Children. She completed her master’s degree in 1976.

Upon the completion of her master’s degree, Woolverton formed her own children’s theater company. She wrote, directed and performed all over California in churches, malls, schools, and local theaters. She also began to work as a coach to children acting in commercials in 1979. In 1980, she began working as a secretary for CBS, where she eventually became a programming executive concentrating on both children’s and late-night programming. During her lunch breaks, Woolverton wrote her first novel, the young adult Star Wind. After quitting her job in 1984 and starting working as a substitute teacher, she wrote her second novel, the also young adult Running Before the Wind. Released in 1986 and 1987, respectively, both were published by Houghton Mifflin.

Woolverton was hired to write the script for Disney Animation’s Beauty and the Beast, thus becoming the first woman to write an animated feature for the studio. From early 1985 to 1988, two different teams of writers had taken a turn at adapting Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont’s tale into a feature film, but Woolverton succeeded by incorporating her own ideas into the story, such as making the protagonist a bookaholic. Upon its release in 1991, Beauty and the Beast received universal critical acclaim, becoming the first animated film ever to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.

Woolverton is divorced from producer Lee Flicker, with whom she has a daughter together, Keaton, born in 1991. She lives in Hancock Park, Los Angeles, and has two dogs.

The success of Beauty and the Beast led Woolverton to work in several projects with Disney. She co-wrote the screenplay of the live-action film Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, released in 1993, and worked again with Disney Animation by helping the pre-production story development of Aladdin, released in 1992, and co-writing the screenplay of The Lion King, released in 1994. Both Aladdin and The Lion King were noted box office successes and received critical acclaim. During this time she also adapted her own Beauty and the Beast screenplay into a Broadway musical, which opened to critical acclaim in 1994, leading her to be nominated for a Tony Award for Best Book in a Musical and to win an Olivier Award for Best New Musical. She provided additional story material for Mulan, released in 1998, and co-wrote the book of the stage musical Aida, which opened on Broadway in 2000 to critical acclaim.

Woolverton wrote the book of the Broadway musical Lestat, an adaptation of The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice, which pre-debuted in 2005 in San Francisco to become the highest-earning pre-Broadway play in the city’s history. The musical opened on Broadway in 2006. She co-wrote the narration script of the National Geographic theatrical documentary film Arctic Tale, released in 2007. In 2014, she announced that she was pitching a pilot for a television series. It was later announced that Lifetime had picked the adaptation of The Clan of the Cave Bear books with Woolverton as executive-producer of the series and writer of the pilot episode. The adaptation eventually ended up being released as a TV movie.

In 2007, she completed a screenplay where an older Alice, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, returns to Wonderland, from an idea she had in her head for many years. She presented the screenplay to producers Suzanne Todd, Jennifer Todd, and Joe Roth, who took it to Disney. The studio immediately accepted the project, attaching Tim Burton to direct. Released in 2010, Alice in Wonderland earned more than $1 billion, making Woolverton the first and only female screenwriter with a sole writing credit on a billion-dollar film. In 2010, Disney invited her to write the screenplay of Maleficent, a retelling of the animated film Sleeping Beauty from the point of view of the villain Maleficent. Similarly to Beauty and the Beast, the film had been in development hell for years until Woolverton was attached to write it. She later described her version of the tale as a complete “reinvention, not just the retelling of the same story.” Maleficent was released in 2014.

Woolverton wrote the screenplay for Alice Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Alice in Wonderland, released in 2016. In 2015, it was announced that she had been hired to write a sequel to Maleficent; Maleficent: Mistress of Evil was released in 2019.