Her biological father, James Wagner, was a pilot who was killed in a plane crash when Priscilla was just an infant. Her mother, Norwegian-American Anna Lillian Iversen, remarried to Paul Beaulieu, a United States Air Force officer and they called her "Priscilla Ann." The Beaulieus were stationed in West Germany at the same time Elvis was there during his stint in the United States Army. Priscilla was 14 years old when they met in Wiesbaden.

Elvis managed to talk the extremely reluctant Beaulieus into allowing Priscilla to live with his father (Vernon Presley) and step-mother at a home Elvis purchased on Heritage Drive in Memphis. The seventeen-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu "worked" on her mother to get her support but before finally agreeing, her still reluctant and protective step-father flew with her to Los Angeles where Presley was filming Fun in Acapulco. After discussing the "rules," she and her father flew to Memphis where they met with Vernon Presley, made arrangements for Priscilla's enrollment in the Immaculate Conception school and her step-father confirmed her living arrangements at Vernon Presley's house.

Once living in Memphis in 1962, Priscilla Beaulieu says she moved into Graceland bit by bit, at first spending occasional nights with Presley, later moving in and sleeping together every night. In her 1985 autobiography, Elvis and Me, she describes Presley as a very passionate man who was not overtly sexual towards her. Although he would spend hours alone with her in her bedroom, Priscilla wrote that Elvis never made any advances towards her. According to her account (p130), Elvis told her that they had to wait until they were married before having intercourse. He said, "I'm not saying we can't do other things. It's just the actual encounter. I want to save it." Priscilla adds, "Fearful of not pleasing him - of destroying my image as his little girl - I resigned myself to the long wait. Instead of consummating our love in the usual way, he began teaching me other means of pleasing him. We had a strong connection, much of it sexual. The two of us created some exciting and wild times."

A completely different view of Priscilla's life, painting her in a rather negative light and describing her as a "wild child" and "sexpot", can be found in Suzanne Finstad's book, Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley (1997), which is based on accounts of several people who knew Elvis and Priscilla well, among them many friends from Priscilla's childhood and adolescence, Elvis's stepbrother Rick Stanley, Mike Edwards, Elvis's ex-girlfriends and the wives of the Memphis Mafia men. The author writes that Priscilla promised sexual favors in exchange for meeting Elvis with Currie Grant, a married, 27-year-old man who knew the singer, that she and Elvis slept together on their second date and that she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night. The book also claims that her marriage was part of a mastermind for fame hatched by Priscilla and her mother and that she never loved Elvis. Finstad takes many quotes that Priscilla has made and calls them a web of lies that she has spun. It should be noted, however, that Priscilla launched a lawsuit against Currie Grant for his claims in the book.

In Elvis and Me, Beaulieu recounted how Elvis would stay up all night and sleep most of the day. If he wanted to go out, he would rent out the venue and invite friends, family and fans, or arrange with store owners to shop after hours when the store was closed. She also talked about the prescription sleeping pills that were present from the very first night she spent with him and how their usage and variety escalated dramatically during the years they were together.

She and Presley were married on May 1, 1967, and daughter Lisa Marie was born nine months later on February 1, 1968. They separated in February of 1972 and were divorced in October of 1973. Their divorce provided for mutual custody of Lisa Marie, who lived with Priscilla in Los Angeles and with her father at Graceland.

It has been said that Elvis was forced into marriage with Priscilla. As part of the original deal made between Elvis and Paul Beaulieu, Elvis must marry Priscilla if she was to live with him. During 1967, Elvis was famously dating "Viva Las Vegas" co-star Ann-Margret. Mr. Beaulieu threatened Presley and his manager Col. Tom Parker to pull a Jerry Lee Lewis-type of scandal if Elvis did in fact not marry Priscilla, exposing the fact that he had a relationship with his daughter when she was only fourteen years of age. Needless to say, The Colonel arranged a whirlwind wedding at the Aladdin hotel to insure that negative press about "his boy" never surfaced.

Priscilla Presley made her television debut in 1980 as a co-host of the ABC series Those Amazing Animals. She went on to portray Jenna Wade on the soap opera Dallas from 1983 to 1988 and starred opposite Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun gag movie trilogy.

She had lived with Brazilian writer-director Marco Garibaldi since 1984; their son, Navarone, was born on March 1, 1987. They called it quits during April 2006.

She is a Scientologist.