Akira co-hosted the 30th Annual AVN Awards alongside pornographic Actress Jesse Jane and Comedian April Macie. She won the AVN Female Performer of the Year Award that night. She was also the most awarded person during that ceremony.

Akira began working as a dominatrix when she was 19 years old. She later worked as a stripper at the Hustler Club in New York. In 2006–2007 she was a regular on the Bubba the Love Sponge radio show and was known as the "Show Whore". She met pornographic Actress Gina Lynn on the show and she offered her porn work. Her first boy-girl scene was with Travis Knight for Gina Lynn Productions, after having already done several girl-girl scenes, mainly with Lynn. She then signed a contract with Vouyer Media before becoming a freelancer six months later. Asa is her real first name, which means "morning" in Japanese, and the last name in her stage name was taken from the anime film Akira.

Akira received several award nominations for her role in David Aaron Clark's 2009 film, Pure, in which she plays a telephonist at a fetish dungeon who has an affair with the head-mistress' husband.

In 2011, Complex ranked Akira fourth on their list of "The Top 100 Hottest Porn Stars Right Now" and at sixth on their list of "The Top 50 Hottest Asian Porn Stars of All Time". LA Weekly ranked her third on their list of "10 Innovative Porn Stars Who Could Be the Next Sasha Grey" in 2013. She was also placed on CNBC's yearly list "The Dirty Dozen", the site’s annual ranking of the adult industry’s most popular and successful stars in 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Akira states that she is sexually attracted to both men and "girls that look like boys". She dislikes being called bisexual, claiming to lean towards heterosexuality but to still be uncertain. She was once engaged to pornographic actor Rocco Reed. In December 2012, she married pornographic actor and Director Toni Ribas. She states that aside from their on-screen work, their relationship is monogamous.

In 2013 Akira and Artist David Choe started a free online podcast featuring 90-minute episodes called DVDASA. It is aimed at a young adult audience, with its goal being to help youth with their problems related to sexuality, career, relationships, etc.

Akira wrote a memoir titled Insatiable: Porn—A Love Story which was released in May 2014 by Grove Press. In July 2015, she signed a contract with Cleis Press to publish her second book, titled Dirty Thirty: A Memoir, a collection of essays, which was released in the fall of 2016.

On April 6, 2015, The Hundreds started releasing episodes for a series titled Hobbies with Asa Akira, which features Akira trying out different activities such as tattooing, boxing, taxidermy, and ice sculpting.

Akira is an Award-winning adult film Actress who, as of May 2016, had appeared in over 505 adult films. In 2012, she married adult film actor Toni Ribas. In 2013, she became the second Asian person to win the AVN Female Performer of the Year Award. She received her AVN Female Performer of the Year Award, a year after Bobbi Starr received the same honor.

In 2017, Akira was featured in a live action segment on an episode of Family Guy.