Parker was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the only child of her divorced parents, health care professional Susan Parker and dentist Donald Parker. After briefly attending a Montessori school, Parker entered Roland Park Country School, where she stayed through high school. At the age of 17, she won Best Actress in the state of Maryland’s high school theater competition. She became a member of The Washington Ballet Company before earning an acting degree in 1993 from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Parker also had a lead role in the 1998 film Exiled: A Law & Order Movie. She worked alongside Martin Lawrence in two of his films: Blue Streak and Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins. On Broadway she played Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Parker eloped with actor Joseph Falasca in March 2001. Their marriage lasted only eight months; they divorced later that year. She married her Soul Food co-star Boris Kodjoe on May 21, 2005, in Gundelfingen, Germany. She gave birth to their first child, a girl, on March 5, 2005. Sophie has spina bifida, which was diagnosed at birth. Parker gave birth to the couple’s second child, a son, in October 2006 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Parker was lead actress in the 2013 NBC drama pilot Secret Lives of Husbands and Wives, and later had a recurring role on Revolution. In 2014, she starred as a series regular in the first season of the TNT crime drama Murder in the First, opposite Taye Diggs and Kathleen Robertson.

In 2017, she joined the popular and award-winning Fox series Empire, playing Giselle Barker in a recurring role during the fourth season. She has been promoted to a series regular for the fifth season.