Ms. Whitman was born Christine Todd, in New York City. She was raised in New Jersey and attended the Chapin School in New York City. She graduated from Wheaton College in 1968.
She became involved in Somerset County, New Jersey politics in the 1980s.
In 1990, she ran for the U.S. Senate against the incumbent Bill Bradley. She was narrowly defeated.
She was elected the first female governor of the State of New Jersey and served from 1993 until 2001.
She was considered as a running mate for then-presidential candidate George W. Bush in July 2000 but was never a top contender. Her prospects were even lowered by the release of a photo of a 1996 racial profiling incident three weeks before the Republican National Convention. During a typical PR event in Camden, NJ in which the govenor rode along in a police patrol car, officers stopped a 16-year-old black man named Sherron Rolax for "suspicious activity" and proceeded to frisk him. After finding nothing, Whitman also frisked the suspect while a state trooper photographed her. This photo drew fire from civil rights leaders who saw this as a violation of Rolax's civil rights and an endorsement of racial profiling by the governor. Whitman told the press that she regretted the incident and pointed to her 1999 efforts against the state police force's racial profiling practices.
Although she did not become Bush's running mate, she was later appointed by the president as the Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. On May 20, 2003 she resigned her position, effective June 27.
She is married to John R. Whitman, a financial consultant, and they have two children.