Candice Michelle began her entertainment career as a professional model and actress. A lot of this "modeling" includes a adult-video past, including softcore and fetish videos. A lot of this work was under the name Mackenzie Montgomery

In the summer of 2004, she participated in the WWE RAW Diva Search contest. She was later signed to a WWE contract despite not being part of the 10 finalists. In November 2004, she began to make appearances on Raw, participating in many diva contests which continued into 2005.

On February 6th 2005, she was featured in GoDaddy.com's controversial Superbowl commercial which created a lot of internet buzz. On June 30th 2005 Candice Michelle was traded to Smackdown, but her time on Smackdown would be short lived.

On August 22nd 2005, Torrie Wilson & Candice Michelle were traded to RAW for Stacy Keibler & Christy Hemme who went to Smackdown. Torrie & Candice then turned heels side by attacking the 2005 Diva Search winner Ashley Massaro. They later teamed up with Victoria and they went on to compete in Raw Diva Contests & Match-ups for the rest of the year. They were later known as "Vince's Devils."

In early 2006, buzz was already going around about Candice Michelle gracing the cover of Playboy, and to promote this, she turned against Torrie Wilson. On March 6th 2006's edition of RAW, Candice Michelle unveiled her Playboy and taunted Torrie Wilson into saying that her Playboy issue was the best of all past WWE Divas. A reluctant Torrie was then attacked by Candice throughout the weeks leading up to April 2, 2006 at WrestleMania 22 when Torrie Wilson would defeat Candice Michelle in a Playboy Pillow Fight. Candice then wrestled throughout the year in WWE Women's matches and participated in contests.

In 2007 the WWE began to push Candice as a wrestler. In April, she began a feud against Melina Perez, which led her to become the WWE Women's champion on June 24th 2007 at the Vengeance Pay per View. She later feuded with Beth Phoenix for the Women's title. On October 7, 2007 at No Mercy, Beth Phoenix defeated Candice Michelle to capture the WWE Women's title. The feud continued and on October 22, 2007 on RAW Beth Phoenix defeated Candice Michelle to retain the title. During the match, Candice took a nasty fall in a botched move, she cracked her clavicle and was put out of action.

In January of 2008, more of Candice's questionable past was brought into the media in the height of an American Gladiators revival when unreleased footage of her and American Gladiator competitor Belinda Gavin was leaked on the net from a softcore pornographic video.