Born as Christine ?ervenková and raised in Chicago and Florida, Cervenka moved to Los Angeles in 1976. In 1977 she met musician John Doe at a poetry workshop at Beyond Baroque in Venice, California, and founded X. They released their debut album, Los Angeles, in 1980 and, over the next six years, five more critically acclaimed albums. As of 2009 she has continued her career with X as well as in solo performances and participation in bands such as The Knitters, Auntie Christ and The Original Sinners.

In 1982 Cervenka published her first in a series of four books, Adulterers Anonymous, in collaboration with artist Lydia Lunch. She has also performed and recorded solo work doing spoken word. In 1999, as Exene ?ervenková, she appeared in the cult video Return of the Goddess, along with guests Karen Black and the band L7. She gave a reading of her poem They Must Be Angels, and appeared in an interview skit with Decoupage 2000 hostess Summer Caprice.

In 2005, her journals and mixed media collages were exhibited in a one-person exhibition titled America the Beautiful at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. The exhibit was curated by Kristine McKenna and Michael Duncan. An expanded version of the exhibition traveled to DCKT Contemporary in New York in January 2006. The exhibition featured a selection of journals from the collection of approximately 100 that Cervenka has completed over the past 30+ years, as well as 18 collages. Cervenka's journals combine rough drafts of songs and personal reflections rendered in a baroque calligraphic script with photographs, drawings and scraps of ephemera found while traveling as a musician. Similarly, the collages are created from found materials to form an interpretative composite portrait of the country she's come to know through her life experiences on the road. DCKT Contemporary continues to represent her artwork.

Cervenka appeared on the 2000 tribute album The Music of The Doors with Perry Farrell on the track "Children Of Night".

Exene is of Irish and Czech ancestry. Over the years she has also been known as Christine Cervenka, Exene ?ervenková and Christine Edge (her married name). Cervenka married Doe in 1980; they divorced in 1985. According to Henry Rollins' book Get in the Van, he and Cervenka are good friends, and did several spoken words shows together in the 1980s.

Cervenka met Viggo Mortensen in 1986 on the set of the comedy Salvation!, a spoof of televangelism. Mortensen played her husband, Jerome. They married on July 8, 1987. On January 28, 1988, Cervenka gave birth to her only child, Henry Blake Mortensen. Mortensen and Cervenka separated in 1992, and were divorced in 1997.

On June 2, 2009, Cervenka released the following statement:

The Western novel Dances With Wolves is dedicated to her by author Michael Blake.