Ms Rivera was raised in Valencia and lived in or around Los Angeles for most of her life. She was of African American, German, and Puerto Rican descent. Her parents married 1986, but divorced in 1996 and her mother Yolanda married Charles Previtire in 1999; Rivera was close to her stepfather.

At 8 or 9 months old, Rivera began to be represented by the same talent agent as her mother, who had moved to Los Angeles to pursue modeling.

Rivera appeared in commercials for Kmart as a baby, but her first significant acting job was at the age of four when she appeared as Hillary Winston on the CBS sitcom The Royal Family in 1991.

As a child and teen actor between 1992 and 2002, Rivera was part of the golden age of black sitcoms, and had roles in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Family Matters, The Jersey, Live Shot, Baywatch, Smart Guy, House Blend, Even Stevens and The Master of Disguise.

In 2009, Rivera was cast as Santana Lopez, a high school cheerleader, on Fox's musical comedy series Glee, about a high school glee club. She auditioned for the opportunity "to sing, dance and act all in the same show", and because she was a fan of co-creator Ryan Murphy's previous work on Nip/Tuck. She drew on her own high school experience of unpopularity to prepare for the role, as well as watching films such as Mean Girls to "really get in the zone and feel like a bitchy sophomore". Rivera described her character Santana as "a bit of a bad girl" and "your typical high school cheerleader, for the most part" saying that she enjoyed playing Santana because she "always has these really witty one-liners she throws out there".[ The LA Times wrote that Rivera was "woefully underused for much of Glee's first season", though Santana played a more prominent part in the last nine episodes of it; Rivera said at the time that "Santana's been wreaking havoc with people's boyfriends and people's babies and teachers – she's the high school terror, and she's going to continue to be the villain". Rivera kept her job as a nanny while working on the first three episodes of Glee, not knowing if they would bring her back; Murphy was so impressed by her that he "convinced the network" to contract her at this point.

On July 8, 2020, Rivera was declared a missing person after her four-year-old son, Josey, was found alone in Rivera's rented boat at Lake Piru, a man-made reservoir in the Los Padres National Forest in Ventura County, California. On July 13, it was announced that a body had been found by divers in Lake Piru.

Condensed from bio on Wikipedia