Veruschka studied art in Hamburg and then moved to Florence, where she was discovered at age 20 by the photographer Ugo Mulas and became a full-time model. In Paris, she met Eileen Ford, head of the prestigious Ford Modeling Agency. In 1961 she moved to New York City, but soon returned to Munich. For some time she was with the Stewart Modeling Agency at 405 Park Avenue in New York, where she reigned as the girl with the most covers on the wall inside the agency’s entrance. She had also garnered attention when she made a brief five-minute appearance in the 1966 cult film Blow Up by Michelangelo Antonioni.

Veruschka appeared on the cover of Life magazine’s August 1967 issue; and various times on all four major Vogue magazines’ (American, Italian, French and British) covers throughout the 1960s. She once worked with Salvador Dalí and photographer Peter Beard, who took her to Kenya. At her peak, she earned as much as $10,000 a day. In 1975, however, she departed from the fashion industry due to disagreements with Grace Mirabella, the newly appointed editor-in-chief of Vogue. In a 1999 interview, Veruschka said of their disagreements, “She wanted me to be bourgeois, and I didn’t want to be that. I didn’t model for a long time after that.”