Ran Asakawa was born in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan on 4 September 1980.

Asakawa finished high school and began junior college. When she realized that she could not make much money doing part-time work she decided to start doing adult videos, and later explained, "I wanted to study to get a decent wage but I can't do that while I have a regular 9-5 job, right? So I picked AVs." She had thought about stripping but decided that the hours were too long. She says she cried after making her first video "wondering what I was doing to myself". She finally got to like sex on camera but keeps her eyes closed from embarrassment.

At first she was not a popular performer because of her mature looks at a time when very young looking girls were the fashion in porn and she did only about 10 videos in her first six months.  However, that changed and Asakawa and her modeling agency submitted an application to the Guinness Book of World Records for making 212 adult videos in the year 2002.  The next year (2003) she outdid her previous record by appearing in 304 videos but announced her retirement at the end of the year.  Her total output in Japan including later re-issues and compilations numbers nearly 800 videos.

In late 2003 the Taipei Times reported that Asakawa had come to Taiwan with the hope of expanding her career there. Although Asakawa had retired from Japanese AV work, in 2004 she did appear in a number of "uncensored" videos - those without the mosaic pixellation to obscure the genitals found in all standard Japanese adult videos. At least some of the videos were produced in Taiwan.