Ward, born on September 24, 1969, in Los Angeles, California, was the youngest of four siblings, and her parents were both professional actors and acting coaches. When Ward was four years old, the family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. At the age of nine, she began doing commercials for local department stores. In her early teens, she went to Japan for modeling jobs and stayed for several years. Having previously learned to speak the language from her schooling in Hawaii, she landed a job hosting a Japanese television show, "Science Q," a science TV program broadcast in NHK from 1988 to February 1989.

In the mid-1990s, Ward had a recurring role on the show Party of Five. Following the exit of her Party of Five character, Ward took the lead role in the Cold War UFO thriller-series Dark Skies. Since the cancellation of Dark Skies, she was appearing in mainly direct-to-video films such as Tick Tock and Mirror Man as well as TV series such as Summerland, Sports Night, Kevin Hill, and Boomtown, in which she had a substantial part.

After graduating from Kaiser High School, Ward moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, and secured roles in science-fiction and comedy movies (including leading roles in Charles Band's classics Crash and Burn, Trancers II and Trancers III (as Jack Deth's future-wife), Arcade, and the 1994 Tom Stern/Alex Winter horror/comedy Freaked). She is also well known for playing Robyn Sweeney, the teen crush of Dave (played by Sean Astin), in the 1992 comedy Encino Man.

In 1995, Ward married Michael Shore, whom she met in acting class. They have two children, a son named Oliver (born in 2001) and a daughter named Audrey (born in 2006).

She later debuted as Kate Howard on General Hospital on May 4, 2007. Ward was taken off contract in March 2009 and remained on the series as a recurring character. In 2010 Ward was dropped completely from the cast of General Hospital.