She has acted on television and was married to actor Dennis Waterman. She has appeared extensively on television in the UK and is notable for her red hair and "40 a day" voice.[citation needed]

Born as Roza-Marie Leopoldyna Lubienska in St Neots, her father, Major Count Ludwik Maria Lubienski, had led Radio Free Europe in Poland and was the chief of the Polish military mission in Gibraltar during World War II. Her mother was the former Countess Elzbieta Tyszkiewicz. She has two sisters, Gabriela and Anna, an actress who appeared in a few films in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Her big break was as Little Ladies' band member, "Q," in the British TV series Rock Follies (1976) and its sequel Rock Follies of '77 the following year. By this time, she had renounced her title as a Polish countess; she has said of the decision, "In England it doesn't count, if you'll excuse the pun."

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she became famous in the United States and Canada as well for her Alberto VO5 hair products commercials that began with a closeup of her stating, "I'm Rula Lenska." People assumed this was a product endorsement by a celebrity whose name the advertisers expected them to know, but it later was revealed that this was a marketing ploy. It worked, and thus in the United States she became famous for pretending to be famous. Most people in the U.S. were unaware that she had an acting career in the United Kingdom, and believed she was just a model.

At any rate, the "discovery" that she was not that prominent in the United States led to Alberto-Culver's eventual decision not to renew its contract with her, bringing an end to her commercial "starring roles."

She has appeared in television series such as Special Branch, Minder, Boon, The Detectives, Footballers' Wives, To the Manor Born, One Foot in the Grave, Casualty, Space: 1999, Return of the Saint, Robin Of Sherwood, the Doctor Who serial Resurrection of the Daleks, Doctors and EastEnders, in which she played Frank Butcher's girlfriend, Krystal, in a Costa del Sol special (2002). She played Mrs Peacock in series 2 of Cluedo.

She starred with the late John Inman in the short-lived (six episodes were screened) 1981 series Take a Letter, Mr. Jones, with Lenska as an executive and Inman as her secretary. In 2003, she starred in the black comedy Paradise Grove alongside Ron Moody. She played the Lintilla clones in the original Radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and can also be heard in the third, fourth and fifth radio series which debuted on BBC Radio 4 in May 2005. She has presented travel programmes for the BBC and has recorded many audiobooks.

In the 2005 film Gypo, which was the first UK feature film to be made under Dogme rules, she plays a Roma refugee from the Czech Republic living on a caravan site in Margate.

Lenska also starred in "Garvey" in the independent British film Jack Says. opposite her one-time EastEnders co-star Mike Reid, which was released on dvd on 22 September 2008. She lent her voice to the upcoming animation film Agent Crush.

As of 2009, Lenska is currently starring in Coronation Street as new character Claudia Colby, an old friend of Audrey Roberts.