A native of Westchester County, New York, O'Neill worked for Xerox after graduation as a marketing rep.
After graduating from Wesleyan University, she began an international modeling career that included appearances on the covers of Vogue and Mademoiselle, as well as catalogue work for companies such as J. Crew and Nordstrom. She was a spokesperson for Liz Claiborne. She was an A-list fashion model in the 1980s when she frequently appeared on fashion magazines. As a model she was known for refusing to appear in advertisements for cigarettes or for corporate sponsors that did not divest of South African investments. She appeared in the 1992 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. In the 1990s she was an activist for the homeless as part of the Black Girls Coalition with about twenty of the world's elite black supermodels.
O'Neill's journalism career has included freelance work for numerous television networks. She was an original correspondent for CBS's The Early Show, which debuted in 1999, where she presented "Box Office Plus", a regular Monday feature. She had a reputation for being more skeptical and less of a cheerleader for the movie industry than her movie news correspondent peers on other networks.

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